


swim far away from the wreck we made

by agentx13 (rebelle_elle)



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-02-28 12:23:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18756373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelle_elle/pseuds/agentx13
Summary: A collection of shorts for Sharon Carter Week 2019.





	1. day 1 :: carter legacy :: i want you to be happier, i want you to be happier

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote almost all of these stories before Endgame so much as got spoiled for me. In the end, I haven't seen that movie, and I still haven't seen Infinity War, and so I'm just... AU-ing the crap out of all of these. I hope someone out there enjoys them, and I still hope we get to see Sharon again.

Sharon never felt overwhelmed by Peggy’s legacy when she was a child. She didn’t understand what it meant to be a legacy then, only that it meant that she was connected to Peggy, the coolest aunt she’d ever known. She’d look at Peggy and smile a pure smile that now exists only in photographs, and Peggy would smile back, but her smile, even then, was never open and carefree.

It was only as Sharon got older that she began putting pieces together. They learned about SHIELD in middle-school textbooks, and every year after added more information about SHIELD’s involvement in overthrowing government leaders in foreign countries or shady operations that came to light, and Sharon started to understand why her aunt always seemed so tired. Never, she thought, never _ever_ would Peggy ever allow any of the things SHIELD did. It must be other people at SHIELD going behind her back or over her head. She earnestly believed Aunt Peggy fought them tooth and nail every day to make the world a better place.

She still believed the stories her aunt told her, stories of adventure and glory, as she graduated from elementary school to middle school to high school. She read postmodern poetry in AP English and thought to herself that things would be different for her, different because she knew about what the world could be, different because _she_ was different, and she was loved, and she was determined, and she would make the world a better place like Peggy did, and she would build upon what Peggy built, and their work would make the world better.

She didn’t know how much Peggy had to give up. She knew that Steve Rogers, Captain America, had died somewhere in the arctic, and that Peggy had loved him in the way people love others before they meet their spouse. Peggy didn’t talk about him much, always distracted by the power of her memories, but she would only say that he had inspired her and understood her in a way no one else had until she met Uncle Daniel, and she only hoped that he was at peace. 

Sharon didn’t know about Peggy’s relationships with her own children that had stuttered to a near standstill when the children were in college, how they loathed Peggy’s job and how it kept her from them. She didn’t know that Peggy rarely got to see them or her grandchildren. She didn’t know that she herself came along at the perfect time, when Peggy was considering retirement and was trying to spend more time with her family, and Sharon didn’t know that her parents were the only ones who answered Peggy’s phone call with a tentative agreement to meet.

She found out, of course. Eventually. Not when she talked of joining SHIELD and saw her parents’ anger with her aunt without understanding why they were angry. But later, after her parents were buried and Peggy forgot about the car accident even though Peggy had held Sharon’s hand at the hospital that night. She knew when Sharon called Peggy’s family to tell them they all needed to find someplace for Peggy to stay because she was forgetting things and they unkindly said things like, “I guess she wants us to drive all the way there to see her, huh?” and “I’m surprised she’s lived this long, honestly. Oh, well. Good talking to you.”

She only understood when she clambered out of the ruins of the Trisk, the ruins of Peggy’s dream, that war was not glorious and that battles were not adventures. Life was a series of betrayals that hurt more than any novel, and she attended funeral after funeral after funeral as she tried to prove to the world that she wasn’t a traitor and got a job at the CIA. She had to divulge everything, including the family ties she’d buried deeper than her friends. She knew when the CIA officers read about her connection to Peggy and other relatives, the ones who used Peggy’s position to cultivate diplomatic careers or think tank contacts – their eyes shifted and they spoke to her with more deference while telling her they wouldn’t show her any favor.

They did, of course. Because she was a legacy, legacy, legacy. The whispers followed her in the halls, the cafeteria, they swept behind her like the ghost of a dress’s train. And she still didn’t fully understand what it meant, other than a weight on her shoulders, an impossible task to measure up to a woman who carried a burden Sharon could never know.

But now she couldn’t fight just to prove herself, she had to fight to prove herself worthy of a legacy she didn’t fully understand and increasingly didn’t want. They never saw Peggy the way Sharon did. They never saw Peggy so tired her feet dragged and her shoulders fell. They never saw Peggy forget the names of the people around her. They never saw Peggy confuse Sharon with someone else that Sharon has never met and laugh with Sharon about past adventures and diner pies. They never saw the way Peggy cried when someone cruelly told her that Dum Dum is gone, or Monty, or that person, or that person, a never-ending, ceaseless procession of the dead.

One day, Peggy will join that procession. They both knew it, knew Peggy’s time was limited and increasingly short. But Sharon couldn’t stay, not with the world the way it was, and Peggy understood, because she never forgot the world’s evils. The lucid days were fewer and fewer, but sometimes Peggy even seemed to understand Sharon’s fragile relationship with the CIA, how they would throw her to the wolves as soon as convenient, but they’ll get use out of her first. Sharon understood it, too, but she didn’t know what else to do. Being a SHIELD agent is all she’d ever wanted, all she’d ever trained for, and the CIA somehow understood that about her, just as SHIELD had done.

So, with Peggy’s blessing, Sharon left. Her place is taken by pages of phone numbers of Peggy’s family and friends in hopes the nurses will help her call people. Maybe, just maybe, Peggy’s relatives would even visit. Sharon had already explained to them how much it helped Peggy to talk to people she knew, how much it helped her to hear familiar voices and feel those connections still. 

Only later, after she got the text that made her heart run cold, did she find out that only one of Peggy’s relatives visited her as Sharon requested, Peggy’s son. Peggy’s idiot son, who texted every phone number on the page to tell them Peggy is dead. As soon as she read the text in her Berlin apartment, she called him back, but he didn’t pick up the phone and her bosses called her in. Sharon tried to focus on what needed to be done now, but she couldn’t help but think that Peggy wouldn’t have died if she’d been there. A childish thought for someone who was no longer a child, but she still cried herself to sleep several nights that week, longing for Peggy to smoothe away her hair and lie and tell her everything will be all right.

According to the CIA-appointed therapist, Sharon had made progress since the Trisk fell but still had trust issues. She didn’t disagree. Sharon didn’t trust anyone at the CIA, including her therapist, who diagnosed her with PTSD and recommended Sharon work a gruelling, thankless job in Berlin where her coworkers ignore and distrust her. But the joke’s on the therapist, because Sharon was, possibly only to spite him, better.

Except she wasn’t. The only thing she had to hold onto anymore, the only person who cared about her, was dead, and Sharon was unmoored.

The most valuable commodity a spy could have wastheir anonymity, but to hell with that. Sharon gave the eulogy at Peggy’s funeral. She didn’t trust anyone else to do it. Intelligence directors there? Ambassadors? Who cared. Let them see her face. Let them know whose face they’ll see if she ever has to take them down.

She managed to get through the day, through the week. She smiled politely, even cheerfully, at people who might as well be strangers. She didn’t think that her smile was now more like Peggy’s, that it wasn’t open and pure anymore like it had been for so long. But she smiled. And she chatted with people like everything was fine. She even chatted with Steve, and she wished, wished, that things had been different between them. She didn’t regret lying to him, but she regretted that she caused him pain. She wished they had met as Steve and Sharon, not Steve and Kate, and that he liked her as much as he liked Peggy. Because she didn’t like him with the passion of youth. She’d never been one to lose herself to passion. She was always too steady for that. She liked him, she cared about him, yes. But it was with the pain of age and wisdom, the knowledge of the things that weren’t good or kind and he deserved more than he got. She saw how he tried to hide his pain and kept helping people, and she admired it. Maybe because she could relate. Not that she would tell him that. They both had their parts to play, and this facade was the only thing she had to hide her true self. She shouldn’t be surprised – even the CIA therapist said she had trust issues.

She almost laughed when she stole Steve and Sam’s gear from the CIA. Maybe if the CIA had trust issues, it wouldn’t have been so easy for her.

She didn’t betray the CIA for Steve. There would be some who would think that, but it isn’t true. She saw how people dismissed Peggy finding inspiration in Steve as hopeless, romantic love, how they used that to paint Peggy as some forlorn fool who never got over her childhood crush. She knows they’ll think Sharon was overwhelmed by her feelings just as Peggy was, that they’ll say Sharon fell for him, too.

But that wasn’t it. She didn’t betray the CIA for Steve. She betrayed the CIA for herself. She betrayed the CIA for an unjustifiable kill order before they have all the facts. She betrayed the CIA because they think all SHIELD agents are traitors, because they refused trust her and only ever tried to use her, because she knew they were using her for nothing but labor and fodder, because they took her hope for a better world and ground it under their heel, because at the end of the day she couldn’t trust them, because she knew the therapist told everything from their sessions to her superiors as they looked for a way to justify their treatment of her. She betrayed the CIA because they weren’t free of Hydra anymore than SHIELD was, because Hydra is still out there, growing, and she can’t wait any longer.

And she helped Steve because he needed help. Because he believed in the world she believed in as a child. Because it hurt her to see him sad. Because what he wanted to do was worthy. Because she believed he was right.

She wanted to join them when she met with them under the bridge. She wanted to stay with them, fight with them, help them through the next stage. But she wanted something else more, and she couldn’t do that with them. And she knew, if she stayed, that she would never leave, and she had something else to do, something more important than any of them. It was a selfish choice, and she was almost never selfish, but her chest ached with possibility and the knowledge of her choice made her feel brazen and daring like no mission ever had.

She didn’t expect the kiss. They’d danced around each other, never each other’s priorities, and for some length of time – she would never be sure how long – they were together and they felt like there was nothing else, no one else, and it was heady and dizzying and he took all of her lip balm off and she still liked it.

She set her thoughts about it to the side. She liked him. She was relieved to know he liked her back, but they each had a mission to do, and the mission came first.

When Sharon drove away, she felt free for the first time in years. She had no boss. She had no agency to work for. She had a mission of her own choosing.

All her life, she had been a legacy. She hadn’t always understood what it meant, but she’d felt its weight nonetheless, its overwhelming taunt, its creeping darkness.

And now, and now, she would drive into the light.

She loved her Aunt Peggy, but she needed to make her own legacy.


	2. day 2 :: what if :: then only for a minute i want to change my mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What If... Sharon were part of the Marvel universe from the very beginning?

“You’re sure he won’t recognize you?”

“Absolutely. He never had eyes for someone like me.”

Fury lowers his head to look at her.

“I was younger then, sir.”

He nods. “You should know. You weren’t my first choice for this.”

 _You weren’t my first choice for a boss,_ she almost says. But she can’t mouth off here. “Understood, sir.”

He nods again. “Dismissed.”

* * *

She attends his welcome-home party. Approaches him at the bar. He sizes her up, and she smiles.

“I know you,” he says.

“I’m sure you don’t.”

“I do, I do. It’ll come to me.”

“Do you make it a habit to know government agents, Mr. Stark?”

“If they look like you do and have handcuffs, I’ll happily make it a habit.”

He’ll kick himself if he realizes who she is. She smiles thinly. “I’m Agent 13, with Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division.”

“Mouthful.”

“Thought you’d like it.”

He looks at her anew.

“I’d like to talk to you about-”

“If it’s business-”

“Not necessarily.”

He grabs a woman nearby and plants her squarely beside him. The woman looks briefly alarmed, then resigned. Sharon recognizes the woman from his file.

“This is my assistant, Pepper Potts. She handles business. Pep.” He doesn’t give Sharon another look, only turns and disappear into the crowd.

“Hi,” Potts says, with a mixture of ease and awkwardness that suggests this has happened before.

“Hi,” Sharon says. “It’s fine. I do need to talk with you or Mr. Stark or both, though.”

“Of course. I’ll be happy to talk with you.”

Potts is smooth, quick-thinking, diplomatic. Sharon can respect that. She gives her a grin. “Let’s talk. Drinks are on me.”

“Stark Industries is paying for the bar.”

“Lucky me.”

* * *

The talk with Potts is easy and relaxed, despite how Sharon’s ulterior motive is to get everything she needs and Potts’ ulterior motive is to give her nothing. The next time they run into each other is much the same. If they weren’t at odds, Sharon thinks, they could get along swimmingly. 

Potts calls her cell phone the night when Stane loses his mind, and Sharon and a couple of other agents show up to almost get killed. It’s the most fun Sharon’s had on this job in weeks - outside of quietly making fun of Stark for not knowing who she is and talking with Potts.

But then the press conference arrives. Sharon has worked hard on a cover story. Potts has backed her up. Fury is expecting the cover story, the lie.

And Stark reveals who he is to the world. Fury doesn’t take it particularly well.

The next time she meets Potts, she introduces Potts to Agent Phil Coulson, her replacement.

* * *

She works enough punishment jobs that even she finds it gruelling. Mission after mission after mission. Budapest with Barton and Romanoff (fun until everything goes to shit, because those two don’t work any other way). Maine with Hill (weird what those people get up to – she’ll never be surprised by a Stephen King novel again). Singapore with Sitwell (fun mostly because he eats something that disagrees with him almost immediately and she does the mission on her own while he locks himself in the bathroom). The worst are when she’s assisting STRIKE Team – she’s there just to be support and to liaise, and she gets why they treat her like a child. They’re more experienced than she is, and they don’t know what she can do. But there’s something else that she can never put her finger on, a darkness beneath the surface.

She goes on like that for years. She becomes adept at living out of a carry-on. She and her aunt call each other at any time because neither of them can keep track anymore, but they always know the other will pick up if at all able. She’s slow to notice that Peggy’s forgetting things they’ve talked about, but she notices, and she does her best to make arrangements from afar because there are still missions. There are always missions. 

She survives by SHIELD training – tricks to get to sleep in impossible conditions, hoarding healthy food to eat when she can’t get any anywhere else. There’s something unfair in the treatment. She knows that. She knows Fury knows it. She doesn’t understand it, but it isn’t her place to question it.

And then _he_ comes back. She doesn’t find out through SHIELD, because she’s on a mission and not everyone at SHIELD knows.

No, she finds out from the news.

She turns off the television focuses on the mission. Takes the phone calls from her aunt. She needs to find a home for Peggy. Peggy’s children say there isn’t a problem. Peggy sees him on the news again, but Sharon can’t answer her questions. She promises to do her best to find out more and they hang up.

She has to focus on the mission. The mission, the mission, the mission. The best and worst thing that can happen. The thing that keeps her away from everything she has to deal with, but the thing that gives her purpose and allows her to clear her mind. 

She completes the mission, then the next, and the next, and the problems weigh on her as she travels back home. She focuses on writing her report and getting some sleep.

* * *

The meeting with Fury starts with, “I’ve put you through the grinder.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“I shouldn’t have,” he grudgingly admits.

Still, she says nothing.

“I have a new assignment. In DC. You can take care of your aunt.”

Her eyes narrow, but she doesn’t say anything. If she does, she won’t stop yelling at him for all his bullshit she’s had to put up with.

“There’s a catch.”

Surprise.

“You’ll be living across the hall from Steve Rogers.”

She nearly throttles him right then and there. She understands why SHIELD keeps secrets, but Fury’s secrets are wreaking havoc. Not knowing he’s come back when it could impact her aunt drastically is one of her main problems with him right now. She has other reasons to strangle him.

She keeps her hands at her sides. She’s still his subordinate. Still has to prove herself. And she will.

“He lies to the therapist. Cheats the test. Romanoff’s been doing an assessment on the sly. She’s worried.”

Romanoff doesn’t worry easily.

“You’ll have a cover story. He can’t know you’re SHIELD.”

Of course he can’t. Then, something sinks in. “Across the hall from him, sir?”

“That a problem, Agent?”

“No, sir. Just. In an apartment? Or… condo? Or...”

“Apartment. He wants out of SHIELD housing. Says he feels like a lab rat. He’s leaning toward a place at Dupont Circle. It’s a walk-up.”

She nods. She doesn’t care. She’s just worried. She doesn’t worry easily. She just isn’t sure she can live out of a _place_ when she’s lived out of a _box_ for so long. “Understood, sir. And if I may, sir, my condolences about Agent Coulson.”

He grunts, leans forward to continue his work.

She begins to leave and stops. “That’s what it was, wasn’t it. You wanted Stark to be an Avenger years ago, and I let him ruin your hopes of him having a secret identity.”

“Not sure God himself could have stopped him.”

She pauses, but the urge to yell at him for all he’s put her through unnecessarily is rising again. Instead, she just says, “Glad you’re starting to realize that, sir.”

She leaves before she can be reprimanded again. Over the next few days, she focuses on finding a home for Peggy that’s safe and caring and everything it needs to be. She tries not to think about the chance that Fury might keep sending her on missions out of revenge.

He doesn’t. Instead, he sends her a key, a file, and handful of cards for Kate Miller. Library cards, credit cards, discount counts. Even an expired punch card for Baskin Robbins. Her identity is complete, and she throws herself into it. She spends her days moving in as quickly as possible and her nights reading on what it’s like to be a nurse. She talks to the nurses at Peggy’s new nursing home, talks to the field medics at SHIELD. Word somehow gets around to STRIKE, and Rumlow catches up to her in the cafeteria to boast about how he can do his own stitches, offers to show her some of his more impressive scars someplace more private. She deflects, mentally running through the list of all the ailments she’s learned about and picturing him suffering each and every one.

“Guy’s an asshole,” Romanoff says, watching him leave.

Sharon tries not jump. She hadn’t realized Romanoff was behind her. “True. I was just picturing him with necrotic tissue and an infection that’s filled with pus, all seeping into his colon, along with fecal mat-”

“Got it.” Romanoff stared at her as if considering her murder. Sharon smiled peaceably back. “Looks like you’re taking well to your nurse cover. Mention it to anybody?”

Sharon grins. “How can I mention it to anybody when I didn’t know I have a nurse cover? Everyone just thinks I have some sort of seeping wound fetish.”

Romanoff grins. “Good. I’ll be running the work side of the assignment. I’m helping Steve move in Saturday.” She must see the doubt in Sharon’s face because she says, “Feel free to check with Fury.”

She does, and Saturday she has house-warming gifts for him and even lemonade to share with Rogers, Romanoff, and Barton. When Barton complains about the lack of beer, she only says that she’s more of a wine person, and Rogers says he can’t get drunk. It’s the start of a weird two years.

* * *

He goes by the name Steve Smith at the apartment complex, and it’s the most ridiculous name she’s ever heard. It’s not the only thing that’s ridiculous, though. When he mentioned he couldn’t get drunk, realized “Kate” was there, and tried to spin it as having a rare condition. Realizing she was in nurses’ scrubs, he talked more about how extremely rare it was, this very real condition, before she smiled kindly and said he didn’t have to justify not wanting alcohol in his apartment. That had been enjoyably ridiculous. The time he’d been so upset after visiting Peggy and opened the main door to the complex so hard he accidentally ripped it out of its frame was less enjoyable, but seeing him try to cover it up afterward was amusing. The time he tried to get everyone to meet together in the lobby to get to know each other and cooked enough food for a kingdom, only to have a handful of people there. He’d had to eat most of it himself as he tried to put a positive spin on things. She’d been there and had tried to join his positive-spin efforts, but one of the other neighbors, Mrs. Krasinski, started fussing at him about eating so much until he made a show of having to go to the bathroom. She sometimes wonders if he’s forgotten how normal people do things, if he’d ever known how normal people do things. Had he ever been normal?

She should be asking if he’s ever been happy. He puts on a good front for other people, but she agrees with Romanoff’s assessment. His eyes are unhappy, his shoulders slouch, he’s sullen – even morose - when he thinks no one is around to see, and he sometimes has a faraway look. His frustration and sadness after visiting Peggy are palpable. She refuses to allow videos in his apartment. It seems like too much of a violation of his privacy. Instead, she sneaks over and plants some microphones with Fury’s blessing. She sometimes wishes she hadn’t; she can hear him crying quietly sometimes, or talking to former friends and family who aren’t there.

Then there are the long stretches of silence that horrify her. She’s always found small excuses to stop by - “accidentally” grabbing his mail instead of hers, dropping off food or a coupon she won’t have time for because of all her shifts. But at silent times like those, when she hopes he hasn’t done anything to himself but can’t be sure, she ends up making something special to take over and leave on his doorstep following a quiet knock.

Soon, she has someone on her small team stationed across the street just in case she needs eyes on the place. But she won’t sign off on video. Not just because of the violation of privacy, but because she knows those are more likely to leak. All it takes is a single agent trying to impress someone or gossip, a picture of him changing his clothes or something, and the secret’s out.

* * *

The assignment is more gruelling than she’d anticipated. She’s working at SHIELD’s Insight Project when she can, then going home and working on the Rogers detail. In between, she visits Peggy as much as she can, whenever she won’t be spotted by Rogers.

She survives, but she’s sure she’s missing something. It gives her nightmares sometimes. Once, after a nightmare, she goes onto the roof to get some air and finds Rogers there. She sheepishly says she couldn’t sleep, and he says he couldn’t, either, and they stand in silence until Rogers offers her his jacket and she says they should both be getting back. That’s the night she can’t stop thinking about. Whenever she’s tired or listless or more likely to be distracted, she thinks about the night when they said almost nothing. But there was still something to it. Something to experiencing the world a different way with someone, maybe. It seems almost surreal in the morning, like a dream.

But reality intrudes soon enough. STRIKE team is still full of necrotic assholes – as Romanoff and Barton call them, the NA’s – and they still insist on bothering her at work sometimes. She doesn’t understand it, but there’s too much to do to contemplate why they single her out. She tries to keep her focus on her work, like Project Insight, where she has to show her coworkers’ team workers how to do certain tasks and coding instead, because her coworkers either don’t know how or don’t care.

Working at SHIELD certainly isn’t what she thought it would be. But at least she has Romanoff and sometimes Barton to hang out with sometimes. Somehow, they’re two of the least judgmental agents she knows, able to assassinate people one second and kick back with a beer the next. When they come to visit her apartment without Steve knowing and she falls asleep on the couch, she wakes to find them gone and a blanket spread over her. They never even mention that night, or how empty her cupboards are, but Barton sometimes sends some homemade stuff to her through Romanoff, who eats half of it and buys her some canned soup to make up for it. At least their intentions are good.

* * *

He’s waiting for her at the nursing home, and she stops dead when they lock eyes. He gives her a jaunty wave, and she walks over.

“Mr. Stark.”

“Shary.”

She forces a smile. “Who told?”

He holds up a photo. It’s of a younger version of her, Peggy, and Tony’s mom, Maria. Howard is there, looking out of frame. Other Commandos are in the picture. Dugan with his too-ruddy cheeks. Monty with his sallow skin clinging to his cheekbones as cancer eats away at him. Jones has scars from after the war, a testament to his Civil Rights work. Morita is already in a wheelchair, looking in the direction of the camera but not at it. His teenage grandson Jimmy has a protective hand on his knee. There’s a clearly hungover Tony being held in place by his mother, and in the foreground is Sharon, beaming at the camera and completely heedless of the hints of trouble behind her.

“Started looking stuff up. After the Avengers thing. After finding my dad had something to do with SHIELD.” At her silence, he flicks the photo away. “She in there?”

“You’re not on the approved list,” Sharon says, her tone short.

He holds up his hands in surrender. “Not here for that. But we should talk.”

She looks toward the road and sighs. She has less than an hour before Rogers touches down from his latest mission. Then it’ll be half an hour before he gets here. She doesn’t want to give up any more time with Peggy than she has to. She gives him the name of a restaurant. Tells him she’ll be there in an hour and a half. No sooner. He nods and drives off.

* * *

He doesn’t know anything about his father, not really. He knows the public image and the private asshole, but nothing in between. She never thought of how fortunate she was to know Peggy as well as she did. She’d always thought her own parents hadn’t loved her, which could be true, but she always had Aunt Peggy. Stark only ever had his mother, and Maria had loved him in her way, but she always loved Howard first. He doesn’t tell her all of this. Some of it comes from Natasha. Some of it comes from what he doesn’t say. Some comes from vague memories. He suspects she knows his father more than he does, and he might be right. She promises to try to fill in some of the blanks, and she follows through over the coming months.

He doesn’t visit Peggy again.

* * *

SHIELD falls, and Sharon understands at long last why she never liked STRIKE. She never sees Steve move out, though Romanoff contacts her to give her a heads up. As for her, she can’t stay. She can’t afford the rent. She goes job-searching.

She gets a text from Tony asking how she is. If she needs help. She doesn’t ask for herself; she can’t. He offers her a job, but she can’t bring herself to give up and join the private sector. But she can ask for help with Peggy.

She lands on her feet at the CIA, and now that she’s in touch with Tony, she’s also in touch with Pepper. She knows that Peggy is getting the best care possible, so she doesn’t complain when CIA sends her to Camp Peary for their so-called intense training. 

She trains for months. Technically, SHIELD agents are considered traitors, but Sharon isn’t like other agents. She’s Peggy Carter’s great-niece, one of Fury’s most trusted agents. He might be dead to the world now, but that still carries weight. And she, unlike they, know that he isn’t dead.

The first trouble in her new life comes when she’s given leave. It occurs to her that for the first time, she doesn’t actually have anywhere to go. She has family houses that she hasn’t used, hasn’t seen, in years, and she has nowhere else to go. She won’t go to Richmond, but Peggy had a place in Brooklyn she’d been fond of. An old penthouse that had been given to her by Howard decades before.

She texts Tony about it, invites him over to see one of his dad’s old places. He brings Pepper and their friend Rhodey, and after relaxing and talking with them for a while – she feels out of practice, having not had normal conversation since before SHIELD fell, but she tries – they invite her to the party at Tony’s place that week. The Avengers will be there. Sharon hesitates, but Pepper mentions that Hill will be there, and Romanoff, and Sharon wouldn’t mind seeing them again.

She goes, and the evening’s going fine until she catches sight of a familiar figure. He sees her at almost the same time, and the man with him looks at her in surprise before turning to him and talking.

“Still haven’t talked to him?”

She isn’t surprised to find Romanoff creeping up on her anymore. She half-turns to her, but she instinctively keeps Rogers and his companion in sight. She isn’t sure how upset he is with her still. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms.

“I told him you were nice.”

“You always were a good liar.”

Romanoff smiles and walks away as Rogers starts walking over, his hands in his pockets.

He stops in front of her, and they stand there together, both pretending not to feel as awkward as they are.

“You look well,” she says, just as he blurts out, “What are you doing here?”

She frowns. “I was invited. What are you doing here?”

He looks taken aback. He looks at her anew and almost relaxes before catching himself. “You were spying on me.”

“I was doing my job.” She came here to relax, not deal with a super soldier’s hurt feelings. “You wouldn’t accept protection.”

“I didn’t need protection.”

“Fury did.”

“Didn’t keep him from getting shot, did you.”

They stare at each other. She wonders how far she should go. She’s made grown men cry before, and he’s a super soldier. But this is Tony’s party, and he and Pepper worked hard to put it together. Her eyes narrow, her gaze becomes murderous.

“Sorry,” he says at last. “That was uncalled for.”

 _He’s_ uncalled for, she thinks, but she doesn’t say it. “It’s fine. You’re the sort that thinks stopping you from killing yourself is betrayal.”

He freezes. She doesn’t say anything more, merely walks away. But she can see out of the corner of her eye his friend slap his arm.

An hour later, he’s beside her at the bar. “Let me get that.”

“It’s an open bar,” she says, incredulous that he would try to talk to her again so soon, that he would try to talk to her at all.

“Right.” He looks awkward for a moment. “Nat says you’re nice.”

She stares at him.

He starts to squirm. Part of her likes it. “Um. What’ve you been up to?”

“CIA. Just finished training. So long as they think I’m not a traitor, they might let me join.”

His eyes widen. “Of course you’re not a traitor.”

She shrugs. “The job means doing things people don’t like sometimes.”

“Like spying on people.”

“Exactly.”

He hesitates, then nods. “Well. Uh. Good to see you. Sharon.”

She nods to him.

But she can’t leave without him appearing again, stopping her at the elevator before she leaves. “Hey, can I ask a favor?”

She looks at him impatiently. She wants to get out of these heels and go to sleep. She has plans with Hill and Romanoff this week, and Peggy’s new nursing home is nearby. Sharon might not have much time off, but she means to make the most of it. She doesn’t need the guy she used to babysit keeping her up, especially after he’d been such a dick to her. She frowns. “Ask.”

He seems unnerved again. “Uh. Bucky’s missing. If there’s some way to find out if the CIA… I don’t know. Knows something?”

“Romanoff and Hill have the same hacking skills as I do.”

“Oh. Right.”

He looks forlorn, if not crestfallen, and it’s bad enough that she finally relents. This is, after all, the guy who puts on a brave front in between talking to the people he’s lost in his apartment. “Fine. I’ll see what I can find.”

He grins. “Thanks.”

He lets the elevator close, and she sighs and leans against the wall. Knowing him can only lead to trouble, she thinks. But there’s no way she can’t help him. He needs to talk to people who aren’t ghosts.

* * *

She finds out about Ultron later on. But she doesn’t have a lot of time to deal with it; the Avengers can handle it. SHIELD can handle it. Even when it’s a floating city, she knows they have it.

It’s the only comfort she has as the CIA gives her a badge and a series of missions working closely under their more trusted agents. It’s months before she’s shipped out to Germany, and she meets with Pepper and Tony and Peggy first because she doesn’t know when she’ll be back. If she’d had doubts about Peggy’s care, she wouldn’t have gone.

Not that Peggy knows who she is anymore. But still.

She goes to Berlin. The terrorism task force is somehow dull. She doesn’t get to go into the field anymore. She’s kept on Everett Ross’s leash. But she’s been trained by SHIELD, and it’s easy enough to work around CIA agents, even when they’re watching her.

She can’t join Steve and Sam every time she gets them a clue, but she tries. It’s her intel they’re using, and she feels responsible. She wants to make sure it pans out. Each time she manages to join them, Steve does that whole “Spying on me from across the hall” schtick. She’s irritated until she realizes he’s only teasing her. He’s just bad at teasing people. And talking to women.

She’s in Berlin when she gets the text about Peggy. Peggy’s family has always hated her, tried to avoid talking to her when they could. She knows on some level it’s because they want the relationship with Peggy she had, but it still hurts in a way she can’t describe. She offers to do a eulogy. She’s sincere, even if she doubts they’ll take her up on it.

They take her up on it. She knows why. She’s a spy. They want everyone to know it, want her cover blown. Or maybe they just didn’t know Peggy enough to deliver a eulogy themselves. Either way, she was sincere.

She gives the eulogy, meets Steve and Sam at the wake. Teases him about retiring. She thinks, sometimes, that he isn’t so bad. She might even like him. Not just the quiet way he smiles, not just the way she knows the super soldier serum didn’t help his voice, not just because she remembers how sad he can be. No, she likes him – might like him - because despite his pain, despite the betrayals he’s suffered, he still tries. He still believes.

None of that is why she helps him with Bucky. What the CIA is doing to Bucky is wrong. Illegal. Unjust. The sort of thing everyone who’s taken an oath of honor should be against. But they’re doing it anyway, and Sharon doesn’t have to play along.

She helps him get his shield because it’s the right thing to do. He kisses her, but she has other things to do, too much to focus on him. She has other missions and other people to help. She has to talk to Tony, to Fury. She has to plan for the future.

But she tells him that he’s free to call her up when he’s done. “So you can spy on me?” he asks. “So I can do my job,” she tells him. Realizing she doesn’t have a job anymore, she pauses. “I’m going freelance.” 

She doesn’t know that Tony is at the airport – she’ll find out later, and she’ll make amends, because they’re the closest thing they have to blood family now. But at the time, she drives away. Goes on the run before anyone knows she’s gone. Disappears like the spy she is.

Less than a week passes before he calls. “Don’t suppose you’d know how to get people off the Raft.”

“Pretty sure I can figure something out.”

“Maybe stay after? We never did get that cup of coffee.”

“I do like coffee.”

There’s always another other mission. There’s always another person to help. And Sharon will always help, will always do what she thinks is right. Because that’s who she is.


	3. day 3 :: female friendships :: we ran our course, we pretended we're okay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sharon and Natasha are each looking for some sort of genuine friendship, but most people never look beyond the surface. When they're tasked with the same mission, they have an opportunity that neither wants to squander.

People think Sharon grew up with tons of friends. She has that vibe. The girl next door. The sweet, innocent person who couldn’t hurt a fly. Even the people who have seen her spar or seen her on the gun range believe she doesn’t have a vicious bone in her body. She smiles, she remembers people’s names, remembers their birthdays. How can she not have friends?

Except, of course, she doesn’t. She never has.

She knows it’s weird. She grew up with everything a kid could want: Two parents who were more or less loving, a doting aunt, people who worked for her aunt who secretly liked kids and would teach her spy things sometimes.

But she also grew up knowing something was wrong, and that made her quiet. She often pushed the feeling away, focused on her goals. It became a mantra – the mission is all that counts. But always, always, the feeling of unease is there. As a child, Sharon stayed behind to help the teacher while the other children went to recess. And so, growing up her birthday parties are kept to close friends and family members, her vacations are spent reading and amusing herself while her parents work. And now, nearly all her family are gone, and she doesn’t get vacations. The mission is all that counts.

The reason everyone thinks she’s nice – other than her face, which at some angles she can admit looks sweet – is that she’s good at the basics. She’ll smile, she’ll remember someone’s name, she’ll remember their birthdays. And they like her, the way people like knowing a convenience store is open around the clock if ever they need something, or how they like having fun things to do in town even though they’ll never go. They like her, but they never invite her to hang out. She remembers them, not the other way around.

It’s a good quality for a spy, but it’s horrible for a person’s well-being.

She’s actually envious of Natasha Romanoff. The Black Widow. Other agents talk about her whenever they think Natasha can’t hear them. She terrifies them, but most of them want to know her better nonetheless. They don’t trust her, not the way they instinctively trust Sharon, but they _want_ to. And they want Romanoff to like them. Sharon doesn’t think anyone wants her to like them.

She doesn’t try to befriend Romanoff. They’ll pass in the halls and nod at one another. They greet each other as “Widow,” and “Thirteen.” That’s good enough for Sharon, who expects Romanoff has her choice of friends. Hell, Sharon even sees the footage on TV of Romanoff with Fury’s new Avengers. And no, Sharon isn’t going to think about how Steve Rogers is back. She has a job to do – a lot of jobs to do, actually, with Peggy’s health deteriorating and Project Insight’s launch date less than three years.

So when she’s called in for a meeting with Fury, she’s surprised to see Romanoff there. Romanoff turns to look at her, and Sharon almost thinks she sees a flash of surprise there, but her expression is quickly inscutable again.

“Fury. Widow.”

“Thirteen.”

Fury looks from one to the other of them. “Good. You already know each other. You’ll get to know each other better. You’ll be working together on the Rogers detail.”

* * *

Natasha wouldn’t call Clint a friend. He’s something different. Something more. He’s someone who gave her a chance and vouched for her when no one else would. But he isn’t a friend. They don’t sit around and chat. They don’t paint their nails. Laura tried to do that with Natasha once, but Natasha’s humor can be dark and unnerving. Laura is excellent at hiding her discomfort, but Natasha still notices that some of her jokes about killing people make Laura tense. She’s been trained to notice. She decides not to hide that part of herself. Laura is willing to trust her, and Natasha doesn’t want to lose someone who’s willing to trust her. Laura isn’t a friend, either, but Natasha will hide part of herself away if it means having someone trust her. Trust is rare. Making good on that trust… Natasha wants to do that, to try. They don’t have to be friends for that.

Fury isn’t a friend, either. She likes him, and sometimes she thinks he likes her, but they aren’t friends. She’s a tool in his arsenal, he’s her boss. He’s nicer than other bosses, but she’s still keenly aware of what could happen if she displeases him.

Maria isn’t really a friend, either. She’s close to Fury, but her trust issues rival Natasha’s own. Maria is cold as winter tundra, brisk and businesslike. The only way she will ever do friendly things with Natasha is if they trade barbs on missions, and she doesn’t go on missions with Maria. She only goes on missions with Barton. She’s fine with this. She trusts Barton to watch her back.

She doesn’t trust the other agents at SHIELD. She tries her best to tolerate them, to be friendly, but it is fast evident that they see her as the Widow, the deadly sex kitten, and they are more enamoured with the idea of surviving her, boasting to their friends that they know her.

It takes her a while to notice Agent 13. The agent is quiet, professional. Her face is soft and open, her blonde hair soft and clean. She would look more at home in a Disney movie than in the field. Agent 13 never tries to hang out with her, never initiates conversations. Natasha thinks at first that the agent doesn’t trust her, doesn’t like her, but that isn’t it. Natasha has survived by reading people, and Agent 13 only looks at her harshly when she’s clearly thinking of something else. And even then, her face is soft.

People underestimate Natasha, see her only as a pretty face. She suspects people underestimate Agent 13, too.

She asks Barton about her, but all he’ll say is that she’s nice. He can’t really say more than that. He tries, but he can’t remember more than that. Agent 13 knows his name and his birthday, greets him with a smile. That’s all he’s got. She believes him. She asks some of the other agents, and they all say she’s nice, too, but they can only parrot what Barton says – she remembers names and birthdays and greets everyone with a smile.

She’s tempted, sorely tempted, to hack into Agent 13’s file. A high designation like that so early in her career means she’s already distinguished herself. Means SHIELD has plans for her. But she doesn’t want SHIELD to think they’re right to distrust her. SHIELD might not be the best place for her, but it’s not the Red Room. It provides some degree of protection from the Red Room. It allows her to make up for some of the things she did at the Red Room. No, it isn’t the best place for her, but it’s the only job she knows, and she doesn’t want to blow it.

Job security comes with the Battle of New York and the Avengers Initiative. Barton is on the team, or Natasha wouldn’t even consider joining. She doesn’t care that much for Tony Stark or Captain America. Ugh. Captain America. At least he isn’t as hokey in person as she thought he’d be.

Not that that means she wants to be around him more. She knows he doesn’t trust her, knows that he doesn’t particularly trust anyone. Especially not after he finds the Hydra weaponry on the Helicarrier.

So she’s surprised when Fury calls her into his office and tells her that her partner on the new mission will be there soon. She settles into a chair to wait for Barton and listens as he tells her that she and Cap worked well together in the field, and he wants her to keep up with the fieldwork. She wonders, briefly, if he’s assigning her a new partner in Captain America, but she abandons the idea. She only works with Barton. 

The door opens, and Agent 13 appears. Natasha glances at her in surprise that she sees reflected in the other woman’s eyes as well, though Thirteen’s features quickly become a professional mask as she greets Fury.

“Have a seat.” Thirteen sits, and Fury leans back in his seat. “You know Rogers is back.”

Thirteen purses her lips and nods.

“Guy has a stick up his ass.”

Thirteen keeps her eyes on Fury’s desk. She doesn’t so much as twitch. Natasha is suddenly very, very glad that Thirteen hadn’t been trained by the Red Room. Better to have the hard-to-read agent as an ally than as an enemy. Fury seems relaxed around her, seems to trust her, but Thirteen, with her soft face and reputation for niceness, doesn’t give any indication of how someone so young is trusted so much. Natasha is intrigued.

“We offered a protective detail. Guy’s got a bullseye on his shield, and he’s even more of a target now than back in the day. But he turned us down. Which means I need you to move into this apartment.” He leans forward and pushes a slip of paper across the paper. Thirteen takes it without changing her features. “It’s a nice place. I’ve checked it out. I’ll cover the rent.”

Both of them look at him.

He holds up a hand. “I want this off book. For a soldier, Rogers has a habit of poking around.”

Natasha smirks.

“It’ll keep you in DC, and you’ll get a promotion downstairs,” he continues. “Charlene’s been working on your cover. She was inspired by your mess in Budapest.”

Natasha perks up. Thirteen had been to Budapest? They had something in common.

“You’re his protective detail at home. Romanoff. You’re his protective detail at work. I know. You can only do so much. But do what you can. Coordinate with each other. Thirteen’s got work to do at the Trisk, and we won’t be able to keep Rogers out of our hair all the time. Romanoff, you’ll have to let her know when Rorgers might make some surprise visits. I want reports on his mental health every two weeks until I say otherwise.”

Natasha frowns, but it’s Thirteen who speaks. “You’re worried he’ll commit suicide?”

Fury shrugged. “You tell me.”

Thirteen folds the piece of paper and palms it. 

“Dismissed.”

The two stand and head out, with Thirteen stopping at the desk outside to accept a packet from Charlene. Natasha notices that Charlene smiles at her, even seems fond of her. She’s never seen Charlene smile at anybody before. Charlene doesn’t like anybody. She’d once told Barton he was only called Hawkeye because he had a bird’s nest for a brain. The metaphor didn’t quite work, and Barton hadn’t taken offense, but the fact remained that Charlene had a mean streak with nearly everyone. Everyone except Thirteen, apparently.

She waits and walks with Thirteen to the elevator. “I’ve never seen Charlene be nice to anyone before.”

“Eh. I’m nice.” There’s a hint of a lilt to the word, as if it’s a private joke she doesn’t think anyone else will get. The only indication that she wants to read her new cover is how her hand is splayed across the front of the folder.

“So you’ve been to Budapest.”

Thirteen meets Natasha’s eyes in the reflective wall of the elevator. “If you want to know more, you’ll have to help me move tomorrow. Meet in the lobby at five. I’ll drive.”

Natasha makes a face. “That’s not nice.”

Thirteen smiles, and like all her smiles, it’s genuine.

* * *

She’d intended to be in the lobby early, but she’s already started her promotion and it seems too many of her agents wait until the end of the day to ask questions. She’ll have to fix that. She hurries to the lobby and makes it with two minutes to spare only to find Romanoff reading a copy of _Pride & Prejudice._ “Favorite or experiment?” Sharon asks, confident that it’s a harmless enough question.

Romanoff closes the book carefully, her eyes on Sharon. “Experiment. We don’t have books like it in Russia.”

“Books with happy endings?”

“That depends on how much you like the characters,” Romanoff says, and Sharon grins and nods toward the doors. She leads the way to the car, a Volvo that saw its best days before she was born. She’d bought it with her own money, had saved up and shopped around and compared and contrasted and haggled until the salesman almost gave it to her for free just to get rid of her. She manually unlocks the doors – no electronic fobs here – and waits to start the car until Romanoff is buckled in.

“You’ve only partnered with Barton before, haven’t you?”

Romanoff looks around the car absently, but Sharon can feel the woman’s attention on her, fierce and suspicious. “You’ve looked into me?”

Sharon stays relaxed. She doesn’t think Romanoff will attack her. The Widow has too much at stake.

Romanoff points at the dash. “Is that a tape player? Does it still work?”

Sharon shrugs. “If you want to play something other than Prince, no. It can rewind, it can play, but it can’t give you back anything you’ve fed it. Once a sacrifice is accepted by the tape gods, it stays sacrificed.”

Romanoff looks at her for the first time since getting in the car. “You have a darker sense of humor than I anticipated. Very Russian. But yes, I’ve only partnered with Barton while at SHIELD. I don’t think this arrangement will be too difficult. We will meet once every two weeks and compare notes before composing our reports for Fury. We will exchange contact information in case of emergencies. We should each have a special ringtone so we know who is calling.”

“Huh.”

Romanoff’s head swivels toward her.

Sharon shrugs. “You just use fewer contractions after you mention Russia. Is that a typical thing you do?”

Romanoff frowns and looks out the window, and Sharon waits until she finally accepts an answer isn’t forthcoming. She’s reaching for the radio when Romanoff asks, “Who else is helping you move?”

“Just you and me.”

There’s that head swivel again. The hard look. “You couldn’t get any of your friends to help?”

“Nope,” Sharon says cheerfully, turning on the radio. It’s loud classic rock, and Romanoff’s brow creases.

“You like this music?”

Sharon grins and waves a hand toward the dial. “You’re welcome to change literally anything about it.”

Romanoff reaches forward and tries to turn the dial. It comes off in her hand, and she pushes it back into place only for the same thing to happen.

“Bought this car with my first paycheck,” Sharon says proudly.

“They must have paid you very poorly,” Romanoff says.

Sharon only grins.

* * *

Moving doesn’t take long. Thirteen doesn’t have much, says she’s only in DC temporarily. Natasha remembers what Fury says, knows it’s important for Thirteen to stay in DC right now for some reason. She doesn’t push. Thirteen pays for beer and pizza afterward, and they make smalltalk. There are a couple more dark jokes from Thirteen, each one taking Romanoff by surprise. She doesn’t expect dark humor from a sweet face. Even she, with all her training, is underestimating this woman.

Thirteen drives her back to the Trisk in the car that reminds Natasha far too much of Russia. She’s quiet for most of the ride, thinking about the woman beside her and how she’s different than Barton and Laura. Thirteen is more cultured than Barton. Quiet, demure. She uses a napkin like a British lady, as if it’s an extension of her self. She doesn’t make fart jokes or burp at the table. Not that Natasha had noticed, anyway.

She’s nice, but she’s more than that. She smiles a lot and means it.

There’s something unnerving about her.

By the time Natasha helps Steve move in that weekend, Thirteen is settled into her cover as Kate, the nurse across the hall. Peeking inside her apartment when “Kate” leaves to check her mail, Natasha sees a collection of furniture that’s nice and serviceable. She wonders how much Thirteen bought and how much Fury covered.

“Stop that,” Rogers tells her, catching her looking into his neighbor’s apartment.

She smiles. “What? I’m just watching out for you, Cap. She could be a psycho assassin hell-bent on your destruction.”

Rogers looks toward the stairs. She can see that he’s thinking of Thirteen’s sweet face and nice smile. “I doubt it.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Let’s just get your crap into your new apartment, Romeo.”

The whiff of potential romance lights a fire under him, and for the rest of the day, Steve is a cyclone of energy, always trying to keep everyone else too busy to ask about his new neighbor. He keeps the conversation with other things.

It isn’t until later that Natasha realizes Rogers had her and Barton to help him move – not that he had much – but Thirteen had asked only Natasha to help.

* * *

The man is depressed.

“No,” Romanoff says in laughing dismissal. It turns some heads in the cafeteria, and it occurs to Sharon that she’s never heard so much as a rumor that Romanoff can laugh.

Sharon doesn’t grin. Only looks at her and waits.

Romanoff’s features fall. “What makes you think that?”

“Thin walls.” That, and Romanoff had bugged his apartment for her while helping him move in. But somehow, telling Romanoff that Rogers has been listening to sad forties music is a betrayal. Not as much of a betrayal, though, if she were to say that Rogers sometimes sits at his kitchen table for hours on end in complete silence. She’s already gone over to take a welcoming gift when she hadn’t heard any movement and seen the deceased Commandos’ files on his table. And checked on him another time when the team outside reported his lights were still out even though it was after dark. It’s only been a week.

She doesn’t talk about that, and Romanoff doesn’t ask. Instead, she only nods. “I’ve got a question.”

Sharon raises an eyebrow. “Of course you do.”

“I’m just wondering.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“What’s your name? I’ve only ever heard you referred to as your code name.”

Sharon grins. “I only tell my name to friends.”

“I helped your move.”

Her grin widens. “True.” She watches Romanoff and eats her burger, letting Romanoff wait it out.

Romanoff frowns, but she doesn’t seem upset. “Fine. Don’t tell me.” She pauses. “But maybe we should eat in private next time we want to compare notes.”

“Agreed.” Too many people here could tell Rogers about Romanoff’s lunch friend. For spies who were supposed to keep secrets, most people here were gossips.

“Same bar as last time? Standing appointment on Thursday at seven unless otherwise stated.”

Romanoff nods and disappears. The next time Sharon sees her, Romanoff is standing over her at their new meeting place. “Fine. He’s depressed. And I don’t think he’ll get help.”

“I don’t think he can,” Sharon muses. “He wasn’t raised to think it was normal or acceptable. People went home from the war and beat their wives and people tried to keep it secret. You weren’t supposed to let weakness show. He’ll feel even more pressure to uphold a certain image because he’s Captain America.”

“So we work on how to help him.” Romanoff drops into the booth seat across from her and crosses her arms. “You should date him.”

Sharon does a double-take. She tries to recover, but seeing Romanoff’s amusement tells her there’s no way her reaction went unnoticed. “Uh, no,” she says, her voice faltering at first. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” Romanoff’s head tilts to the side. “He’s handsome. There are people at SHIELD who would love for his abs to be pressed against them. Along with other body parts. Or so I’ve heard.”

Sharon doesn’t doubt it. She keeps her eyes on the menu. “Just… no. Let’s get to the task at hand, shall we?”

* * *

The next months are almost humdrum for Natasha. Missions provide a distraction, and Clint and Laura sometimes insist she visit the farm so she doesn’t work so hard. Sometimes, she tells them she can’t make it because of her meetings with Thirteen, and Clint says, “She’ll understand. You can even tell her where you’re going. She knows about it.”

Natasha stares at him. “How does _she_ know?”

Clint shrugs. “Fury asked her to help out with some things here a couple times. I told you she was nice.”

“I thought you only knew her name and that she’s nice.”

“I forgot. She’s that kind of person, you know? Kind of… forgettable.”

“Fury remembers her. And he trusts her. A lot.”

He nods. “I mean. Don’t you trust her?”

She knows what he means. The Disney princess smile. The blonde curls. She’s tall and lithe and she looks so wholesome. Who could help but trust her? Even Natasha trusts her to a large extent, and she trusts almost no one. “How did she and Fury meet?”

He shrugs again. “Ours is not to question the designs of the sound and the Fury.”

Natasha perks up. “They call her the Sound?”

He looks at her, almost pityingly. Ah. An American reference? Now that she thinks about it, there was some book, wasn’t there? “You’re adorable.”

“I can kill you with a single finger.”

“But you won’t, because then you won’t get any of the pie I plan to bake later.”

“Hmph. You’re lucky I like your pies.”

* * *

“How do you know Fury?”

Sharon doesn’t flinch as Romanoff slides in across from her at the bar. “He’s the Director of SHIELD,” she responds, straight-faced.

Romanoff rolls her eyes. “How _else_ do you know Fury?”

She should have known Romanoff would be suspicious. She should consider herself fortunate that Romanoff hasn’t asked before.

Before she can think up a lie, Romanoff’s eyes slide to the door. She smiles like a wolf. “Saved by the bell.”

Sharon frowns and half-turns, and it’s with a mixture of consternation and relief, she sees Rogers walk in.

Romanoff waves him over, and he startles when he sees who else is in the booth.

“Uh. Hi,” he says, holding out his hand. He drops it hastily before she can shake it and puts it in his pocket, then looks as if he isn’t sure what to do. “Um. What are you- what are you doing here?” He glances at Romanoff.

She wonders if Romanoff will realize there are things she’s left out of her reports on Rogers’ behavior. The number of visits she’s made to his door at all hours, for instance, when she’s concerned, or when she just thinks he needs someone else around. Rogers isn’t subtle. “She said she’s a friend of yours. We were just talking.”

He glares at Romanoff.

“Just looking out for you,” Romanoff says sweetly. “But I have to go. Why don’t you take my seat, Steve?”

She leaves, and Sharon and Rogers both watch her go. Sharon looks away first, and from his expression she knows it’s going to be a race to see which of them kills Romanoff first.

* * *

Natasha survives the following week, mostly because she makes herself scarce. She knows Thirteen will be in the bowels of the Trisk working on Insight. Thirteen lets nothing slip about what Insight is, but other people aren’t so tight-lipped.

That’s part of the reason Natasha is considering what she’s considering. Thirteen hasn’t let anything slip about Insight or Clint’s farm. She hasn’t even let her own name slip.

And now that Rogers has seen them in the bar, they need a new meeting place.

It takes days to decide, and her stomach feels weird when she follows Thirteen into the bathroom. She makes sure they’re alone and gives Thirteen a slip of paper. “New meeting place. You bring the food, I’ll bring the beer.”

Thirteen looks mournfully at the piece of paper in her hand without unfolding it. “That place had such good burgers...”

Natasha gives her a look. “You know you can still go there, right?”

Thirteen sighs. “But I’ll need a new excuse now.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. _Americans._

* * *

Sharon is just as surprised to see Romanoff’s place as Romanoff likely was to see Sharon’s car. It’s one of the SHIELD-issued studio apartments on Connecticut Avenue, cheap but serviceable. Everything is tiny and clean, and somehow, even though there are no sharpened knives or bodies in sight, it seems comfortable.

“Expecting bodies?” Romanoff says lightly, leading the way into the main room. A table is set to the side, the bed against the wall farther off.

“At least one,” Sharon complains. She shrugs off her coat. April is finally here, but winter will continue to nip at DC for a while longer. Romanoff takes her coat, and Sharon looks around, curious but polite, without moving from her spot. The room has a surprising amount of pastels, but no artwork on the walls. No pictures. “You’re trying it out, aren’t you.”

“Hm?” Romanoff heads into the kitchen area for the beer, and Sharon takes the few steps to set the food on the table.

“The style. The decorating.” She nods to the apartment. “This is kind of you, but not quite.”

Romanoff scowls. “We’re not here to talk about me.”

“I didn’t go to the bar two weeks ago to have dinner with Steve.”

Romanoff can’t suppress her grin. “How was the date, by the way?”

Sharon drops into a chair. “Now I really _do_ wish you’d decorated the place with knives.”

“You’d never kill me before I killed you,” Romanoff said cheerfully. She sets the plates and silverware on the table. She seems so pleased with herself that Sharon decides not to suggest they eat out of the styrofoam trays the food came in. She’s never heard of anyone being invited to Romanoff’s place. She isn’t even sure Barton’s been here. “I _could_ decorate the place with knives,” Romanoff muses.

Sharon nods. “At least have them hidden around.” Their eyes meet, and Sharon shakes her head. “You already do.”

Romanoff doesn’t deny it. She looks at her plate of food. For a moment, the room feels awkward, but the moment is gone so quickly that Sharon wonders if she’s imagined it. “Okay. So Steve and I have gone on three missions since we last talked...”

* * *

Natasha waits outside the hospital. This is the best time to establish contact, when the federal agencies are still bickering about who gets to clean up SHIELD’s mess. All of them have axes to grind against SHIELD and its lack of respect for other agencies’ jurisdictions. None of them have the resources and organization yet to tail all of the SHIELD agents.

Thirteen leaves through the sliding glass doors and stops on the sidewalk to take a deep, cleansing breath. Without any serious injuries, she’d had to wait until more pressing cases got cleared out. Natasha can only imagine how many of those there were. 

Natasha waits to see if she gets a taxi, but after looking around, Thirteen turns and heads down the street. Smart. Harder to track. Hopefully, more agents do the same.

Natasha sets off to follow her, but after rounding a corner finds Thirteen there waiting for her.

“You might as well join me,” Thirteen says. She starts walking again, this time with Natasha beside her.

“Nice bandage. Nice scar?”

She holds out her arm and studies it for several seconds. “Better be, the trouble I went to for it.” They walk together for a couple miles in companionable silence. Neither suggests catching a ride, neither suggests taking it easy.

“You haven’t asked about him.”

“Had time to visit in the hospital. He wasn’t awake yet, but the doctors were optimistic. Met his new friend.”

“Sam Wilson. He’s good for him. I think.”

Thirteen nods. “I think so, too.” She hesitates, then heads up the stairs of a large, three-story brownstone. The security is more complicated than a key – it involves a fingerprint and retina scan.

Natasha follows Thirteen inside and stops to study the pictures set up in the hallway. She recognizes the person in many of the photos. “How much of a Margaret Carter fangirl are you?”

Thirteen looks away. “There might be beer you’re willing to drink.” She leads the way to the kitchen, but then pauses. “Screw it.” She goes into the dining room instead and pulls out an old-school full bar from the wall.

“You’re not just a SHIELD agent, are you?”

Thirteen hands her a bottle of vodka but doesn’t answer. “Need a place to stay? Only other person who knows about this place is Fury, and I don’t think he’ll mind.”

Natasha studies her. She can’t tell if Thirteen knows if Fury is still alive or not. She knows Thirteen will never say anything one way or another. “What’s your name, at least.”

Thirteen hesitates. “Sharon.”

“Carter.” It was a guess, but given where they were, she was confident she was right.

Another hesitation, longer than any of the others, then a nod. “If you tell...”

“You’d never kill me before I killed you.” At her cold glare, Natasha’s grin fades. “Just Sharon, then.”

Thirteen - _Sharon_ \- takes a swig of dark rum. “Just Natasha, then?”

“Just Natasha.”

They study each other for several more minutes, drinking in sync to break up the monotony. 

“TV.” Abruptly, Sharon turns. Natasha follows her into a comfortable living room on the second floor. She doesn’t turn on the news, though, instead putting on old TV shows. It’s the only thing on at this time of night that isn’t news about Hydra or an infomercial. 

It’s almost two hours later, and Sharon is sagging in her seat when Natasha straightens. “I have to leave.”

Sharon makes a sound deep in her throat and gives a part-wave.

“Not right _now,_ ” Natasha says impatiently. “After.”

“After the funeral,” Sharon slurs, and the underlying sense of humor in it is the only hint Sharon knows Fury is alive.

Natasha stops and turns to stare at her. “You knew. About Fury.”

Sharon holds up a finger. “You’ll never know.”

She doesn’t need to. Sharon was the only agent that had been alone with Fury after the Winter Soldier - _Bucky_ \- shot him. There’s no telling what passed between them before help arrived. But Natasha can guess.

Natasha’s brow creases as she traces her thoughts back. “Right. I need to leave.”

“Bye.”

Natasha leans over and slaps Sharon’s foot. “I mean. Later. After.” She grins at Sharon, who grins back. A sham funeral is more hilarious the more she thinks about it. “I need to change my look.”

Sharon looks her up and down as much as she can without moving her head. “Blonde?”

Natasha scoffs. “No damn way.”

“Dye your eyebrows,” Sharon challenges.

Natasha waits until Sharon is done drunkenly laughing and imitating what she would look like without eyebrows. “I mean. Like. Nails. Hair _style._ Clothes shopping. Maybe.”

“Oh.”

They lapse back into silence. Sharon stares at her, and Natasha can’t tell if she’s too drunk to understand what’s going on or not.

Finally, disappointed, covering the pain as she always has, she settles back into the couch.

“The answer’s yes.”

Natasha looks over; Sharon is still staring.

“We’re friends. I’ll help you do your nails and hair and find something nice and professional that you can still kill people in.” Sharon grins. “I got you, nerd. I had you going. The invisibrows thing. I got you.”

Natasha grins back and promises, “I’ll get you back for that.”

“Uh-huh. Sure.” Sharon laughs to herself and takes another sip of the dark rum, and Natasha makes a note to get her some water before they go to bed. 

Sharon isn’t weirded out by dark jokes or fatalistic humor. She understands. She may not know everything, but she understands. She’s… nice.

And she knows such a great way to get her back. Because now she knows why Sharon didn’t want to date Steve, and she knows that Steve needs a nice girl who can handle herself as well as a dose of fatalism.

Natasha grins to herself. “Boom.”


	4. day 4 :: sharon takes up the shield :: we see what we've become

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve disappears again, and this time there's only one person who knew him who is willing to take up the shield.

No one ever thought Steve would live forever, but somehow it was always been impossible to think of him dying and not coming back. But he dies, and he doesn’t come back. Maybe he isn’t dead for good. Maybe he’ll come back just like he had before. Maybe he won’t.

And in the meantime, someone has to take up the shield.

Bucky and Sam are consulted, but both of them prefer their current aliases and purposes. They know the weight of the shield in ways she has only seen secondhand. They know what they’re doing. They know what’s at risk. They still choose to pass.

Next is Tony. Not to pick up the shield himself, but to suggest others. He suggests Clint, who turns it down. Clint suggests Kate Bishop, who turns it down. 

It’s soon obvious. There’s no one else, but there _must_ be someone else.

She trains in secret. The shield flies differently than anything else she’s ever known. She ends up bringing in Bucky and Sam to train her. Learning how to shoot a gun was never this hard. And she trains, and trains, and trains. She trains harder than she ever has, because she knows the shield will be a heavier weight than a badge ever was.

Bucky and Sam are supportive. Tony and Clint are supportive. Kate is enthusiastically supportive.

Other people are not.

Her first foray is almost unintentional. She’s on the roof, confident enough now to try using the shield outside with Sam to back her up. There’s a gas explosion a couple blocks away. Rush hour. No one else will get there fast enough. But she can. She knows she can.

She’s lived a full life. She’s died multiple times and found ways each time to survive. She’s been young and naive, old and weary. But now she’s in a new body that feels better than before, and she knows she can do this.

She saves 98 people; Sam saves almost twice as many. But they get everyone out, and everyone is alive.

The headline the next day is there’s a new Cap pretender in town.

She keeps training, keeps working. She partners with Sam and Bucky whenever she can. She’s used to being behind the scenes or on solitary missions. She’s used to being out of sight. But the shield, the shield can’t be kept out of sight. It’s a symbol. It means something. Something different to each person, but it means something nonetheless.

To her, it means Steve. His ideals. How he kept her ideals alive by virtue of his existence.

She loves him, and she may never see him again.

She isn’t an idealist, but she figures she doesn’t have to be. She, Sharon, can be whatever she wants. As pessimistic as she wants. But she, Cap? That is an act, and it must be perfect.

It isn’t. She’s still shaky with the shield when crunched for time, throws it like a frisbee instead of a disc. She curses once in front of schoolchildren, breaks a priceless artifact in the museum. Tony thinks the whole thing is hilarious. She goes back and trains, and trains, and trains.

She knows there are message boards talking about how she can’t do this, how a girl shouldn’t be carrying the shield. She’s never cared about the mere opinions of people on message boards before. She doesn’t now, either. 

Support comes from unexpected places. Bernie, Steve’s ex-fiancee, who can talk about Steve with her in a way the guys can’t. Carol Danvers, who goes from passing acquaintance when Sharon was at SHIELD to a full-blown friend now that she’s working more and more with the Avengers. Things are awkward with Natasha at first, in a way that is tenuous but undeniable. They were fellow spies who understood getting their hands dirty, and now one of them carries an impossible legacy that means keeping her hands clean. But they are both trained to adapt, and they adapt accordingly.

She makes enemies. New ones. She never understood before how much her older enemies respected her. Faustus, Taskmaster, Zemo, even the Red Skull. She still fights her old enemies, fights and fights and fights, and some fights are easy and some fights are hard, and there’s a certain joy in each one. Because each of them knows the old-school rules. Each of them knows the dance, the routine. Each of her old enemies respect her. But these new ones, the government bureaucrats who train their own Captain Americas to replace her, who demand she hand the shield over because she can’t carry the weight meant for another, they get under her skin in ways she never anticipated. They’re worse than the message boards; one sends his chosen captain into the field to steal the shield and she beats his ass with ease on national television. She’s surprised by how much she’s come to think of the shield as hers.

There are times when she longs for the old days, but not the old days people think. People think she probably misses the days when all she had to do was oversee SHIELD missions or the Secret Avengers. But in truth, the memories she holds closest are of her and Steve. Not sex, not talking, just sleeping together in bed. His fingers light in her hair as they sleep peacefully and softly and together.

In time, she thrives. She joins the Avengers and ends up as co-leader, then leader. She coordinates missions like she used to, but in the field, making snap decisions as she oversees various groups of people. She handles the shield with more ease. Steve had said it felt like an extension of himself, and more and more often she understands what it means. She goes out more often without Sam or Bucky, branches out on her own. She forms partnerships and friendships and builds up a rogues gallery of her own.

Public opinion starts to shift. She’s been Cap now longer than Bucky, longer than Sam. Not everyone is happy with her, but few people can deny that she’s skilled. She isn’t the idealist Steve was; it turns out her pragmatism is a benefit. Some people monologue about America’s evils, and often, Sharon is ahead of them, agreeing but knowing that a motive does not forgive causing others pain, offering solutions that don’t include killing.

Somehow, she becomes a mother figure to people who are roughly her age and younger. When she finds out people think of her as a mom, when Clint slips and calls her “Mom” to her face, she’s absolutely horrified. Sam, Bucky, and Tony can’t stop laughing. Natasha can’t, either, and from then on her official codename within the group is Mom. 

No one ever thought Sharon Carter would become Captain America, and no one expects her to be the new captain forever. One day, Steve will return. One day, he’ll again take up the shield.

But maybe, just maybe, she’ll keep the shield. Keep the title, too. Let Steve take Nomad again.

Because _she_ is Captain America.


	5. day 5 :: greatest fears :: i want to see you smile but know that means i'll have to leave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An attempt at an Endgame fix-it.

The dream feels real. That’s the weird thing about it. It isn’t just a dream. It’s one where she can feel herself losing sensation as she disappears into a void. There’s more, after. A world changed, deaths that shake her, a world that’s too busy caring about others to care about her.

She wakes to find Steve shaking her shoulder, gentle but firm. Their apartment is dark, but the light from the street lets them stare into each other’s eyes.

“I had a dream,” he says.

“Me, too.”

“I went back in time.”

“I disappeared.”

“I married Peggy.”

They both freeze. After several moments, Steve looks bashful.

She sits up and leans against the headboard. “Did you see everything that happened? Like a memory, but shaky?”

“Not so shaky.” He looks sullen and points to his temple. “Maybe the serum?”

She nods. “I think you dream faster than me.”

He half-grins at her. “I think I do, too.” He pauses. “You turned to dust. Disappeared in the snap.”

“I felt it. Wondered what that was. Time in between was about five years? Give or take?”

He nods. “Nat-”

“-died. So did Tony.”

He nods again.

She looks at him. Soon, he looks at her. “I’ll talk to Buck and Sam and Nat. Find out if they had the same dream.”

Steve inhales. The confusion disappears; resolve takes it place. “I need to talk to Tony.”

She’s already getting out her phone. “Do you remember the exact date? That it happened in the dream?” She only has a vague memory.

He nods.

They each make their calls. Tentatively, they get together, a quiet meeting in an apartment Tony owns in neutral Amsterdam (of course, Tony would have a place in Amsterdam). They all remember their dreams in bits and pieces or more. Most of them wrote it down when they realized details might be significant.

“It could be an alternate universe,” Tony says.

“I attended your funeral,” Steve reminds him.

“So what is it, then? A vision?” Natasha asks.

“A warning?” Clint points out. “This Thanos guy must have pissed off a lot of people. Maybe someone’s trying to stop him.”

Everyone guesses. But they’re all just guesses. They don’t even know, logically, if they should take this seriously, but there’s a feeling in their bones and a crying in their blood and they can’t risk it.

“The important thing is that we know it’s coming,” Steve cuts in. “And we can prepare.”

“And this time we’ll be together,” Tony warns. “Because I’m gonna have a wife and a kid to worry about.” He looks distant for a moment. “Nothing happens to them. Nothing.”

They look at each other. It’s going to be tough to keep one thing from the future but change the rest.

“No sacrifice plays,” Steve says firmly.

They all look at each other uncertainly at that, but they get to work nonetheless.

* * *

They have less than a year to prepare, and they’re not ready. Steve never says it aloud, but Tony does. Still, the dream has an effect. They’re united. They have allies on and off of earth. Fury calls the woman he refers to as “Captain Marvel” (real name Carol). The Guardians of the Galaxy, as they call themselves, have brought their people, and Gamora and Nebula know Thanos. They know he needs one of them to get the soul stone. They know he needs Dr. Strange (real name Strange) to get the time stone. They know he’ll need the tesseract and the reality stone. Vision for the mind stone.

They know it isn’t a mistake that they’ve come across the stones in different capacities and yet are all connected somehow, if only by a tiny planet. Space is huge. Thor is from a different realm. And yet, it comes down to a group of people who have scant connections to each other but can account for each stone. It isn’t an accident. It isn’t a coincidence. It’s like a dream, like destiny.

They join together, and the battle is hard. But Steve is determined that no one else make a sacrifice play, and Sharon is determined that he not make a sacrifice play. Neither of them mention the possibility of what he might do instead, neither of them look at each other when they think about it. There are more of them in the initial fight this time. They don’t fight divided, and they aren’t conquered. Shuri works on plans and technology. Carol wields the gauntlet. Tony goes home. They can’t stop all the sacrifices. Gamora gives herself in exchange for the soul stone; her last words are to Nebula, and Nebula won’t say what they were.

When they’re done, the world is different. More connected somehow. They return home. Most of them are happy.

Steve and Sharon are less connected. They are chaste in bed. He has memories of Peggy. She has memories of coming back from an abyss to find herself unmourned.

They can’t go back to what they were. He didn’t stay in the past, but that’s all she knows for sure. He doesn’t tell her about it and she never asks, doesn’t want to hear. 

She thought she knew what fear was. Facing Hydra, she knew fear. Facing Thanos, she knew fear. But feeling Steve grow farther and farther away day after day, knowing he still loves someone who told him to move on, knowing he still loves someone he can never have, knowing he might only love her because of that person but can never love her the same way she loves him… She leaves. She can’t do anything else. She has to leave.

* * *

They’re friends for a while. Everyone chalks it up to the strain of saving the world. And they did save the world. Steve’s criminal record is expunged. So is hers. So are the others’. They can walk free again. Tony and Steve are working on the Accords again, and Sharon and the others join when they can. But when she’s around them too much she has to leave, has to ask Fury to send her somewhere else.

* * *

Tony and Pepper have a child that isn’t Morgan. It’s fine, they say, because Morgan isn’t due yet and there’s still a chance and they’re still happy.

* * *

Sharon feels restless. It surprises her, but she makes friends with the others – mostly the women and Bucky and Sam and Scott and Luis (it’s impossible not to be friends with Scott and Luis). She even makes friends with Tony, trading stories of their SHIELD relations, of names he’s only heard but that she knows full backstories on. She likes spending time with him and Rhodey in his lab, where her restless energy can join his. She doesn’t know why she feels restless. She doesn’t talk about it with the others. But there are days when her energy is high and she wonders if she might vibrate herself out of existence. She visits Peggy’s grave more often. Sometimes Steve is there and she instantly changes direction as soon as she sees him. Her bones sing a quiet cacophony of unease.

* * *

When it’s time for Pepper to give birth to Morgan, she gives birth to a son instead. They all knew their actions would trigger a butterfly effect, but they thought they had somehow dodged this one, kept their daughter alive just as Tony has asked them to. Pepper and Tony are happy, but it’s obvious they’re still crestfallen over losing Morgan. They don’t say it out loud, but they retreat from the others and don’t say anything to them at all. They even avoid Sharon for a couple months. Natasha gets sullen whenever it comes up, and they all know they’re thinking of what could have happened. They’ll always think of what could have happened. Even though they forget more and more of their dreams with each passing day, they can’t help but think of what could be different. And the singing in her bones turns to a desperate, wordless scream.

* * *

Then there’s the day in April when she opens her door to a knock and he’s standing there with flowers. As soon as she sees him, the screaming fades to a hum. It is right for him to be on her doorstep. She knows this even as they look at each other awkwardly and just as awkwardly look away.

“Weird?” he asks, holding up the flowers.

“Kind of,” she admits. “You… How are you?”

His eyes don’t stay on her longer than a few seconds, but when they’re on her, he drinks her in. She doesn’t look away from him anymore. “Good. Uh, you?”

“Better,” she admits. She doesn’t know why. But she is.

“I got therapy.”

She blinks. This wasn’t the conversation she anticipated.

“Can I come in?”

She lets him in, and he sits on one end of the couch with his legs splayed out before him while she curls up in the opposite corner. It’s much like the old days, but the larger cough provides more distance. Too much distance and yet not enough.

“When I had the dream. And with all of us talking about it after. It sounded insane. _I_ sounded insane. Peggy loved her family, but that me didn’t care?” He shook his head. “I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I talked to Sam, and he recommended someone. Who recommended someone else. And.” He shrugged. “I think I hurt you.”

She gives a long, slow nod, then another. “I don’t think you meant to.”

“I shouldn’t have, though. I wasn’t seeing you for you. Not completely. I thought I was. You have to believe that.”

This time, the nod is slower, more hesitant.

“I wasn’t thinking of Peggy as a person. I only ever kept that picture of her from the war. I never- even when I talked with her when I came back, she was always _that_ Peggy, just changed. I was wrong. And stupid. And selfish. In that nightmare, I was so, so selfish. It was wrong of me – that version of me – to leave everything I had for a chance with someone who was already happy without me.” He looks at her. “I’m sorry.”

His apology doesn’t fix everything. But it still means something to her. “So the therapy’s helping?”

“More than I thought it would. If I’d gotten therapy sooner, I’d have known to find someone else to manage the support group. I wasn’t the person for it.”

She was never in a support group. Never saw him have anything to do with a support group. She was dusted and unmourned then. She isn’t sure how to respond to that. “At least you found a way to be happy.”

“That’s just it,” he says, the words tumbling out. “I wasn’t. That me… he didn’t care about her, Sharon. Not like he should have. He wanted what _he_ wanted. He didn’t care what she wanted. She was _real_ to him.” He looks at the flowers on the table. She should probably put them in water. “Not like _you’re_ real to _me._ ”

She doesn’t say anything to that. Can’t. She can’t forget that he left her for someone he’d helped her bury. She had lived with him, loved with him, and he’d left that.

“I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to go back. I want to move forward. I have a home here. I have a family. I don’t want the life he had.”

She looks at the flowers. Her veins are humming again, but differently than before. “Would this version you go back?” she asks.

“I did.” His voice is quiet. “When we fought him this time. For real.”

She bites her lip.

“I asked her to forgive me. For leaving. For not being there.” He leans forward, his eyes distant. “We talked. It was good. Felt good.” He looks at her. “I’m not that man anymore, Sharon. Not that I ever was. We said good-bye. Again. But this time she understood, you know? I think I did, too. I tried, at least. He doesn’t look at her. “I was a wreck before that. Didn’t realize how bad it was. I was afraid that I was the person who would leave. I didn’t want to talk to you again until I knew for sure.”

Her heart is pounding so hard her chest aches, but she doesn’t dare look away. “And now?”

He swallows. “I know I messed up. But I want to try again. If you’ll have me.”

She hesitates. The pain of the past is not easy to forget or overcome.

He seems to understand. “Start with a date?”

“A date sounds like it could be good,” she says carefully.

* * *

They go on a date, and it goes well. They go on another date, then another. The universe starts to feel more aligned. Tony and Pepper have another child, a girl they swear has Morgan’s eyes. Steve decides to try retirement for real – mostly for real - and gives the shield to Sam like in the dream. He can still do some good as Steve Rogers, he says. He tells Sharon that he wants to find out who he is without being Captain America.

Steve and Sharon go back to sharing a bed, and their dreams are full of the normal weirdnesses and anxieties and comforts. Sometimes, they talk about that other universe, what it means that any of them saw it at all. They don’t have the answer. All the know is that Peggy had a long and full and happy life and loved her family and died peacefully in her sleep, and neither of them ruined that.

* * *

“Don’t interfere.” The Watcher’s voice is sing-song.

“I’ve already met other mes,” Death says. “None of us like our jobs so much that we would wish it on another.”

“You interfered, though.”

“I suggested some things,” Death says. “That’s all. A dream or two here and there.”

“All over the planet.”

“Only the living ones.” She looks away from Earth, out into the universe. “I hate that insufferable little stone. People aren’t meant to die like that. It violates the natural order.”

“You interfered.”

Death shrugs. “Pretty sure I wasn’t the only one. You like them, too.”

The Watcher doesn’t respond to that. His mustache twitches as he looks at the planet. “I guess neither of us interfered. Officially, I mean.”

“Guess so.”

They briefly share a smile. They both know that there is a multiverse out there no matter what these humans do. But they both have an interest in preventing a panoply of more universes. Indulging humans rarely led to anything good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another fix-it is on the way, if I can finish it in time. That one will likely be more canon compliant. ... in a manner of speaking.


	6. day 6 :: free day :: in the cold light of day we're a flame in the wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sharon isn't dusted in the Snap. 
> 
> Part 1 of another Endgame fix-it.

She doesn’t disappear in the snap. She’s among the millions who watch in confusion and helplessness while people turn to dust around her. 

She’d volunteered for a supply run to Venezuela. She and Steve talked about it. He, Natasha, and Sam often do the flashier missions; Sharon does the ones that slip beneath the radar. Sometimes, she works alongside them, and no one even notices. But they almost never join her on the quieter missions. Steve and Sam attract attention with more ease than roadkill attracts flies.

She leaves thinking she’ll rejoin them shortly. She makes her way to the Venezuelan hospital. She hands over the insulin to a nurse and watches as flecks of the woman fall away. Her instincts take over; she drops to try and catch the insulin. With the medicine safely in her hands, she stands and sees that patients, nurses, doctors, visitors, all of them, are either disappearing before her eyes or screaming in panic.

She can’t leave right away. The hospital needs help. Everyone needs help. No one understands what’s happened. Communications are down. Sharon calls people on her phone, hoping against hope, but none of the calls go through. She doesn’t know what’s happened to the people on the other end, doesn’t know if they’re trying to call her or if they’re dusted like so many others.

She doesn’t feel right leaving, but soon she can’t stay. Her hosts seem to understand. They give her what little food and clean water they can spare. 

The country never had a lot of resources; she walks most of the way to the border. She can’t ask anyone to spare the gas to take her. Her contact near the border is gone. The coyote who’d helped her into the country is gone, too.

Every country she passes through is in a mix of uproar and shock. Stark is dead, she hears. Captain America is back. She doesn’t realize how frightened she’d been that he was gone until she has to stop and breathe. She feels dizzy for a moment, then keeps going.

She finds out more as time goes on. Her phone battery is dead, but the news is up and Wakanda is left bereft as T’Challa and Shuri disappear. Ramonda issues a statement that Wakanda will survive. Wakanda forever. Memorials are being held for Stark. The surviving Avengers issue a statement delivered by Natasha about Thanos. Something about a snap.

And that’s when the language changes. People weren’t dusted. They were snapped. They were taken away by someone too powerful for the Avengers to stop. 

There are some nights where she hides, her feet aching and bloody, and she wants to scream and scream and scream. The Avengers didn’t fight, she wants to tell everyone. The Avengers weren’t together. Hadn’t been together. Maybe the individuals had fought, but she knows, knows that they didn’t fight together. Because Steve and Stark hadn’t even spoken for so long.

She wants to think things will be easier when she reaches the States, but hope is harder to come by than nights without nightmares.

She makes her way to Brooklyn by whatever means she can, and her heart sinks as she sees the city. Storefronts are boarded up. Litter is scattered along sidewalks. It takes her several blocks to realize that people are giving each other directions to where they can find food and water, warn each other of price-gougers, and offer updates on mutual acquaintances. For the first time, there’s a glimmer of hope. People show their true selves in troubled times, and these people are showing their goodness.

Steve isn’t in their apartment. She uses a phone at the corner grocery to call the compound, but no one picks up. She goes to Sam’s place, but no one is there, either. At length, it finally occurs to her to try the VA, where either man would go to help their own if they were in town.

She goes, and she looks into room after room after room without seeing him. She’s almost given up hope when she hears her name whispered from behind her. 

She turns, and she barely realizes it’s him before he’s crushing her in a hug, his face in her hair. She hugs him back as hard as her non-serumed arms allow. “I think I might smell kind of gross,” she tells him.

“You smell amazing.” She knows it’s a lie, but he doesn’t let her go. 

One of the retired vets sends them home, and they take off. Sharon’s feet are still too sore to walk quickly, and Steve matches her pace until he realizes why she’s going so slowly. He picks her up, and they are home soon, never speaking, just holding each other.

He slams the door behind them, doesn’t bother to lock it. He drops her in her bed and falls on top of her.

Neither of them come up for air for what feels like a week. Her lungs burn. Her body aches. He sits at the end of the bed and gently rubs her feet.

Finally, they talk. He tells her what it was like. Sam. Bucky. Vision. Wanda. T’Challa. Losing so many. Losing at all. He’s experienced setbacks before, but never anything like this.

“I don’t know if I can keep doing this, Shar.”

She crawls toward him and wraps her arms around him from behind. “You don’t have to, Steve.”

“I have to bring them back. I have to find a way.”

“We will.”

“You can’t promise that. You weren’t there, Sharon. Tony’s body is still out there.”

She holds him tighter. “From what you’re saying, it sounds like we need to get the gauntlet.”

He turns to look at her. “Any idea how?”

“I’ve been distracted.” She grins. “But I’ll think of something. Maybe in the shower. Because I _need_ a shower.”

“You might need help in the shower.”

“I might.”

* * *

She’s ashamed of how long she sleeps after she gets back. She feels like she’s recovering from a cold, especially with Steve bringing her meals and holding her close as they sleep.

“I should call Natasha,” she says at last.

He strokes her arm. Something is distracting him, but he won’t tell her what until the idea is more detailed.

She calls Natasha, and the two of them talk for hours as Steve falls asleep with his head on her shoulder. They talk about the Avengers, both alive and not. Natasha hasn’t been able to get in touch with Fury or Hill. There are too many others gone, too, that are trickling in. They talk about ways to bring them back. Neither of them know how yet, but they’re both wracking their brains for ideas. Sharon’s yawning by the time they hang up, promising each other to talk again soon, and she leans her cheek against Steve’s head and closes her eyes.

* * *

It’s months before Steve says, “You’re going to hate me.”

She looks at him over the breakfast table. “Try me.”

“I want to retire. I want to disappear.”

She frowns. “That sounds… ominous.”

“I don’t want anyone to follow me. I don’t want people to look for me.”

“Okay…” She still doesn’t understand. “What do you need me to do?”

“Bear with me. Because I’m going to act like an asshole.” He pauses. “Do you think you could pretend to be snapped a little longer? No one but Natasha and some of the vets know you’re back, right?”

She nods. That part she understands. If no one knows she’s back, she can be an invisible help to them again. “When?”

“As soon as we get our people back,” he says.

She nods again. She understands that, too. She hadn’t thought he would do anything less.

* * *

She doesn’t think he’ll get hung up on Peggy. He digs out the compass with Peggy’s picture in it and carries it around. He talks to people about her, but it’s only a version of her. One that never even existed. 

She raises an eyebrow at him when he comes home and he leaves the compass by the door. She’s curled in a chair, reading a book on quantum physics. She knows it won’t help her bring everyone back, but she can’t not try, even when her brain feels like soup.

“No one will want me around if they think I’m the sort of guy to get hung up on a married woman,” he says with a shrug. “And I don’t want anyone coming to me for help unless they’re absolutely desperate.”

“I can see why they’d think that.”

He holds his hands up in surrender. “You doubt me?”

“I’d be less disturbed if she weren’t my great-aunt. And if you hadn’t been a pall bearer at her funeral.”

“Good,” he says. “If you’re disturbed, imagine how everyone else feels.”

“Hm.” She goes back to her book.

“I’m gonna have to prove myself to you, aren’t I?”

She peeks over her book at him. 

He shrugs. “Gotta do what I gotta do.” He walks closer. She closes the book as he leans over her. “Have I told you how relieved I am that you’re here?”

“Wouldn’t hurt to tell me again.”

He tells her again. He helps her to the bed. He shows her until she would beg him to stop if she weren’t so relieved that he’s here, too.

* * *

She goes upstate to stay with Natasha. The two of them go through book after book after book. Natasha tries not to leave the compound if she can help it, so Sharon is the one who goes out and talks to people, interviews them. It’s for this reason that Natasha leaves Sharon’s picture and name on the lists of the Snapped. Who’s a better spy than a living ghost, she asks, and Sharon wants to say that Natasha is, that Natasha should be out there. But they’ve had the argument before and instead Sharon offers to pick up some food and some candles to get Natasha’s home-stench out of the compound. Natasha doesn’t take the bait, and Sharon goes out alone to track down lead after fruitless lead.

Stark comes back while she’s gone. She calls Steve as soon as she hears the news, but Steve is dour. Stark didn’t have any leads, and apparently the reunion had not been kind.

* * *

There’s a subtle shift. Sharon feels it. She’s a part of it. There’s a despair in the air. It isn’t just the Avengers, it’s everybody. Stark is back, but too many others are not. No one knows how to bring them back.

The market steadies, somewhat. People focus more on rebuilding rather than just surviving. Cities announce annual mourning ceremonies. Her name isn’t on any of them; she’d moved so much, changed her address so much, that even though most of the world thinks she’s gone, there’s no one to mourn her. It’s a cruel twist that she’s around to see it happen.

Most people give up. Not her. Not Steve. Not Natasha. But most people. They go back to their lives because there’s food to buy and rent to pay and the jobs leave them just as tired as before.

She gets in the habit of checking the Snapped list. Day after day. Sometimes, new names appear as someone realizes that a person is missing. Sometimes, old names disappear as a person is found.

One day, she finds her own name on the New York lists.

“Surprise,” Natasha says when she mentions it. “Steve was upset you weren’t on any of the lists, but he couldn’t do it himself. Because, you know. He’s insane.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Insanely _stupid,_ ” Natasha elaborates. “He’s right, though. Sometimes when he talks about your aunt, I want to punch him in the throat and crush his esophagus. No offense.”

“None taken. I think about that sometimes, too.”

There’s a pause.

She knows why. “Right? It’s creepy!”

“ _So_ creepy!” Natasha says.

“I hate him,” Sharon says, looking at Steve across the room and making a face.

“You’re sleeping with him.”

“Yeah, but I’m not enjoying it. I’m just doing it because he looks good when he’s on top of me.”

“He’s there, isn’t he.”

Sharon watches as Steve sets aside his folders. He goes through everything she and Natasha find, even though most of it is useless. “Yep.”

“I’m going to hang up first,” Natasha declares. “I hate when you hang up on me just so you two can go-”

Sharon hangs up, and she and Steve look at each other across the room.

“You really do love me, don’t you,” Sharon says.

“I really do.”

“You’re such a nerd.” She leans against the wall. “You’d better get in bed.”

He points to a blank spot on their kitchen table.

She shakes her head. “I’m not buying another table. I’m supposed to be dead, remember?”

* * *

The memorials for the Snapped resemble celebrations. Sharon can’t stand them. She can’t stand the concerts, can’t stand the fireworks. Can’t stand how major cities have a five-minute silence while blurry names scroll past on a large screen behind them too fast to read, how smaller communities have a handful of people read the names aloud before everyone digs into food donated by local businesses.

She is one of the Snapped, and she does not feel memorialized. She doesn’t feel mourned. She doesn’t feel as if her sacrifice mattered. That bit always gets her. The Snapped’s “sacrifice,” as if any of them chose to disappear.

On the first anniversary of the Snap, she’s at the Compound with Natasha partly because she doesn’t want to be alone, and she doesn’t want Natasha to be alone, either. They have the news on in the background, and as they work around the room they drift closer and closer, look at the television more and more, until finally, they’re sitting on the couch yelling at the screen, heckling the campaigning the politicians and calling people out on how they treated the Avengers before and after the Snap.

After that, they make it a point to have beer and popcorn at the ready. Steve is never invited to join them, but he’s often back home, giving speeches. The second year, he doesn’t mention Sharon, but he mentions Peggy, and Sharon wishes things were different.

“How’s that working out?” Natasha asks nonchalantly.

“Not my favorite thing,” Sharon asks, knowing there is nothing nonchalant about the question. Natasha is lonely. So is Sharon. They had been friendly before, but they are now the only ones who wander around the Compound like ghosts. They are each other’s best friend by default. “He wants to retire within the next five years. We’ve been looking at places online.”

Natasha shakes her head. “If they’re online, they’re already too public. You’ll be found in no time.”

“My thinking, too.” She shrugs. “Haven’t had a lot of time to look.”

“I’ve got time,” Natasha says, not looking at her.

“I won’t turn you down,” Sharon tells her. “But you need to choose a place you’d feel comfortable visiting. Because you’ll be visiting.”

“Yes ma’am.”

* * *

Natasha has a place for her by the third anniversary. It’s a cabin deep in the woods. The road is a pain in the ass to navigate. The place needs to be fixed up. It’s an old safe house, but one that no one expected anyone to find. So there are multiple bedrooms, a loft, plenty of vantage points.

“We can deliver stuff to the Compound,” Natasha tells her. “But I think you’ll be fixing it up on your own.”

“We can video chat.” With Steve doing more in town, and increasing his performance that makes Sharon’s insides twist, she doesn’t go a week without talking to Natasha anymore. Often, they check in with each other each day. Or at least, that’s what they call it. But they do more than check in. They talk about TV shows, movies, books, past acquaintances, current acquaintances, what they’ve found, whether any of it might lead to anything.

The last bit doesn’t happen all the time. They both want to bring back everyone they lost, but they’re trying because they can’t think of anything else to do now. Neither of them will confess to losing hope.

* * *

Steve comes to visit her at the cabin, furniture bought in the city in tow, and she shamelessly uses him for his strength as she directs him where to put everything.

“Sometimes, I think you’re just using me for my body.”

She points at the dresser he’s moving. “Two inches to the left.”

He moves it accordingly, looks at her.

She considers. “Three inches to the right.”

Suspicious, he moves it.

She nods. “Two to the left.”

“Doing this on purpose, aren’t you.” Nonetheless, he moves it.

She grins and leads the way to the kitchen. “I’m not just using you for your body, you know. Your body’s just a perk.”

He grimaces as he follows her. “Eh. I’m just using you for your body, too.”

“Keep talking like that, and you won’t get any of our celebratory beer.”

“What are we celebrating?”

She waves a hand around the cabin. “Our first house.”

He looks at her for a moment, in a way that makes her insides twist. “Our first home,” he corrects her.

She tsks. “Just trying to butter me up so you can get your beer.”

“You caught me.”

She hands him a beer, and they stand together in companionable silence. 

“I’ve been thinking about what life could be like. After this.”

“Hm? Thinking of adding a rug in the living room?” She’d just been thinking that, too.

“No. I mean, maybe? But I mean, when I retire. I didn’t really have much choice last time. But now, I’m looking forward to it. I keep wondering who I am without the shield, and I’m not really sure. I think the only hobby I have is doodling sometimes, and I don’t even do much of that anymore.”

“We’ll find you some hobbies,” she says. She takes his empty bottle from his hands. “After you chop some wood. Natasha said it gets cold here in winter and I can’t get the place rigged up for heat before then.”

“Using me, using me, using me.”

“Damn right.” Still, before he passes her, she stops him with a gentle hand on his arm. She leans in and kisses his cheek. “We’ll get them back, Steve.” She doesn’t know if it’s true or not, but she knows it’s what he needs to hear. “And we’ll play house here and go on missions on the sly when we get cabin fever, and we’ll try every hobby we’ve ever heard of to figure out which ones you like.”

He turns his head and catches her lips. After, he rests his forehead against hers. “I would retire today if I didn’t think people would track me down immediately after.”

“I know.”

He shifts, touches his nose to hers. “I’m sorry about how I’m using Peggy. How I’m using you. That’s the part I don’t like. The part I hate.”

“It’s fine.”

“Is it?”

She hesitates. Seconds pass. She shrugs. “I want to have a life with you one day. I’m willing to share you if I have to. But if you want to focus on finding yourself, I get that, too. I’ll protect you, no matter what you want to do. No matter how you decide to do it.”

“SHIELD Special Service, always protecting me.”

“Yeah, well. We’ve already established that I’m using you for your body,” she says, keeping her tone light.

He nods, but he’s frowning as he thinks of something else. “I don’t think of her as Peggy.”

“What?”

“The person I talk about when I talk about Peggy. That’s not the Peggy I knew. She’d kill me for mooning after her like that. I just… think of her as someone else.”

She turns to look at him and stills. “It doesn’t bother me.”

“Maybe not a lot.”

“It kind of bothers me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you two were related when I first asked you out. But Peggy… she’ll always be important to me, but she’s not the person I want to build a home with.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Complete with a white picket fence?”

He makes a face. “Maybe not a white picket fence.”

She moves closer and wraps her arms around his waist. “It did bother me.”

“’Did?’”

“I’m feeling better now.”

“Good.”

“I can prove it to you.”

He goes still. “Are you about to use me for my body again?”

“Yup.”

“Good.”

* * *

The fourth anniversary of the Snap sees her back with Natasha at the Compound. Steve is giving a speech this year, pressured by others and interested in pushing his agenda. WWII factors in heavily. Refusing to give up is a constant theme. “Some people move on,” he says, “but not us.” He waxes eloquent about remembering those they’d lost. He talks about the Commandos. He talks, just as she knew he would, of Peggy.

“He definitely sounds unhinged,” Natasha remarks.

Sharon groans. “Don’t mention hinges. Please.”

Natasha smirks. “I thought you said everything is going great at the cabin.”

“It is,” she says, too quickly.

Natasha smirks again. Just for fun, she throws popcorn at Steve’s face on the screen.

“Hey, what do you do for fun?”

Natasha’s quiet for a while, then shrugs. “I’ve tried some things. Turns out I can’t knit.” Her voice is soft, like she thinks Sharon will mock her.

“I can’t, either. I should have asked you about hobbies sooner. We could have learned stuff together.” She isn’t thinking about how alone they both are, how Natasha has made herself a prisoner of this fortress, until Natasha turns to look at her in faint surprise and notable gratitude. “Steve brought up hobbies,” Sharon continues. “I’ve been thinking about checking things out for him to try. You and I should probably test things out first, make sure he won’t get himself killed.”

Natasha nods. “Sounds smart.”

* * *

The fifth memorial ceremony comes and goes. Sharon and Natasha have mastered knitting. They even exchanged unnecessarily-complicated scarfs for Christmas.

The cabin is almost set up. Sharon’s put in built-in bookcases along one wall for all the books on hobbies and places and science she’s accrued. 

She’s in Europe to talk to Jane Foster again when she gets a series of texts from Steve and Natasha.

Steve texts her a simple, “Hold tight. Might have a plan.” Followed by, “By hold tight, I mean come back. See you soon.”

Natasha sends her a selfie, the camera held above her head so it catches Steve, Stark, and others in the background. They seem oblivious to the picture being taken while Natasha looks directly into the lens. “Steve wanted to change the outfits. I said you’d never allow him out of the house looking like that. Now he’s making us all dress like this.”

Sharon excuses herself to Dr. Foster and gets permission to call later if she has a question. Walking away, she texts Natasha back, “Steve said you might have a plan.”

“We do,” Natasha answers. “Better. We have hope again.”


	7. day 7 :: endgame :: and i'm left there with my thoughts and the image of you being with someone else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of Steve and Natasha saving everyone who got Snapped, Sharon is left to wait.
> 
> Part 2 of the Endgame fix-it

She texts Steve as soon as she gets back to the States, but he doesn’t answer. She tries not to think anything of it and goes to the cabin before texting him again. Still, nothing. She texts Natasha, but Natasha doesn’t answer, either.

She waits. Days pass. Her calls go to voice mail. She doesn’t dare leave a message and fill up their inboxes. She texts, though. Text after text after text.

They don’t have cable at the cabin. They don’t even have wifi. Steve had insisted on trying to get by without. And yes, she still has plans to install wifi anyway, but she hasn’t gotten around to it.

She goes to the compound. It’s empty.

No one is answering their phones.

She searches the compound for answers but finds nothing. No note. No message. Nothing.

She turns on the television and watches and waits and nothing nothing nothing.

She wants to cry with frustration and despair. The only people who know she’s alive are gone and she can’t find them. She doesn’t know where they are. She doesn’t know what they’re doing.

It’s during a Yoplait commercial that she finally acknowledges the fear she can’t suppress anymore. Steve might be dead. He’s the sort to make the sacrifice play. He’s done it before. He’s dead, and Natasha is trying to figure out how to tell her. Or they’re both dead. Maybe they’re both in space, unable to come home, and dying, and she will never know.

The news anchor announces a breaking news story, and Sharon runs to stand in front of the television as they report that everyone who was Snapped is back. They appear to be the same age as when they left. They’re all in the exact same place as when they left.

The Avengers did it. No one says it outright, but as soon as the news story breaks, the Avengers’s phonelines and communications systems start ringing and lighting up and making various other noises, and she knows that soon reporters will be outside the gates of the facility.

She doesn’t want to leave, but she can’t stay. She can’t answer their questions. She can’t answer her own questions.

She goes back to the cabin and waits, waits for people who may never return.

* * *

She drifts into restless sleep and wakes again to wait some more. She doesn’t know ho wmuch time has passed since the news broke. She’s afraid to look. Every minute that passes makes it more likely that he’s gone.

Unbidden, her mind forces different scenarios on her. There will be a quiet knock at the door. She’ll open it knowing she’ll find Natasha there, Natasha who doesn’t leave the compound anymore just in case, and they will look at one another and she will know.

Alternately: There will never be a quiet knock at the door. There will never be anything. Eventually, she’ll open it knowing she needs food or supplies, and she’ll go into town and find that everyone is mourning the Avengers. There will be new memorial ceremonies where people give speeches about the people they never liked while the Avengers were alive. There will be fireworks and fried ice cream, and Sharon will grow old trying to move on with her life, maybe even pulling it off, like Peggy did. And maybe the ceremonies that turn into celebraties will hurt less.

At length, at too long a length, the door slams open. It isn’t Natasha’s quiet, measured method. She turns, and he is there, holding her and squeezing and it hurts but she doesn’t complain. His beard is gone and there are tears still on his cheeks.

“We did it. We did it. _She_ did it. Natasha did it.”

She hugs him as tight as she can, and he spills everything out in disjointed spurts. Tony is dead, Tony is dead, and- But they brought everyone back. Natasha brought everyone back.

She doesn’t understand. Not until he’s calmer. He’s exhausted and hungry, and she tries to cook as he sits at their table and tells her about Scott and the quantum suits.

“Natasha sent me a picture.”

He stares at the floor. Silence grows. He continues with his story.

When he tells her about Natasha, she stares at him. Blinks. She goes back to stirring the spaghetti. It doesn’t sink in right away. And then the tears are falling and he’s behind her, hugging her, and it still isn’t sinking in. Natasha is supposed to knock on the door. Natasha is supposed to knock on the door. She’s supposed to visit. They talked about this. They’re going to take up more hobbies together and get unnecessarily competitive and Natasha is supposed to knock on the door.

They sit on the kitchen floor and cry and hold each other and tell each other lies about how it’s all going to be all right. Steve keeps talking. The sauce burns.

They make do with sandwiches and cereal and whatever snacks they can find. They’re both tired to the bone now, and Steve takes a short shower that’s more of a rinse than anything while Sharon slowly putters around their bedroom and changes into pajamas. 

In bed, they hold each other in the darkness. He tells her that after everything, that after he’d been acting for so long, he saw Peggy and ultimately went back. He danced with her, told her he was safe and loved, that part of him would always love her. He told her she would move on, and she told him she already had. But there is a peace, he says, in knowing she won’t mourn him now.

In the morning, he’s gone.

* * *

She cleans the kitchen. She keeps busy. She keeps her mind off other things. 

He comes home that afternoon and says, “I need your help with something.”

“Always,” she says. She means it. And then she looks at him and says, “Are you just using me for my body.”

“Not just for that,” he says with a sad grin.

The old joke makes the cabin feel more like a home, and Sharon realizes that no home can be a home unless it has seen pain to match the happiness.

* * *

She gets him the Photostatic Veil. Fury doesn’t ask what she wants it for, and she doesn’t tell him.

“Are you sure about this?” she asks Steve.

“It’s perfect,” he says. “They’ll know I’m out there, but they won’t track me down unless they’re desperate.”

“What about the shield?”

“I’m thinking about it. It’s obviously going to be Bucky or Sam.”

“Sam will need training.”

“Bucky could train him.”

“Bucky might need help. Not even Wakandan therapy can cure PTSD in a year or two.”

“Sam can help him.”

She watches as he tinkers with the settings, then steps in to help. “They’ll make a good team.”

He grimaces. “I forget sometimes you’ve never seen them together.”

“They’ll make a good team,” she says firmly. “Because they care about you. And they’ll be a good team because they need to be to make you proud.”

He looks at her for a second, then frowns as she makes a face.

“You look like Joe Biden.”

He laughs and looks in the mirror, laughs again. “Perfect.”

* * *

She comes back from a walk to find Bucky at the breakfast table. She stops short.

“Sharon,” he says. He nods to her. He’s holding one of Steve’s coffee cups.

“Bucky.” She nods back and moves inside. She pours herself some coffee and joins him at the table.

“Good to see you alive.”

“You, too. And so young.”

A corner of his lips shifts. It’s almost a smile. After a moment, he says, “Steve brought me here.”

“Calm down, Barnes. You only tried to kill me once.”

He grimaces. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. You didn’t get nearly as close as some other people did.”

He looks at her thoughtfully. 

She nods to the table in front of him. “Something to eat?”

“Sure. What do you have?”

They work together in the kitchen, digging through the cabinets and fridge to find something he’ll like, and he gets to work preparing a meal for the three of them without even being asked. Despite how she and Steve have talked about him sometimes, she doesn’t expect this side of him.

“Wakanda was good for you.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly, slicing tomatoes. 

“You probably knew how to cook before that, though.”

“Yeah,” he says, a stronger hint of a grin this time. “Steve says you can’t cook.”

“Steve says a lot of things that get him in trouble.”

He laughs at that. “He talked to me. About the shield. About helping Sam.”

“I said you two would make a good team.”

“We could. If we don’t kill each other.”

“You won’t kill each other. You both have too much pride to be murdered by the other.”

He laughs again, a quiet sound.

“So you’ll do it?”

“I might. He makes retirement look good, though.” His eyes are wistful. He’d found peace in Wakanda, Steve had said.

“We have spare bedrooms, you know.”

“And you’re welcome to stay whenever you like.” After their quiet conversation, Steve’s voice is loud in the small space. “What’s for dinner?”

* * *

They’re in the woods on a hike when he points something out behind her. She turns, and when she turns back, he’s on a knee, holding up a simple gold ring. There is no diamond, but that isn’t what she expects, nor what she wants. The simplicity of the ring is fitting. Its beauty is in its meaning, its significance.

They get married in a small ceremony. Bucky is their only witness, the only person to join their small meal after.

They are content, and they are happy. That night, she lies with her cheek on his shoulder as he strokes her hair, and they are the only two human beings for miles and could be the only two in the world, and they feel at peace with the universe.

* * *

She drives him to the lake for Tony’s funeral. She sits and thinks of how Natasha should get one, too, but she doesn’t know if it will happen. The Avengers had too much to do when she’d first died, and then, when the dust had settled, they couldn’t agree. Public or private, where, what could they do with no body? What would Natasha want? Who had she talked to about it? The people who knew her best can’t agree on what she would want.

She thinks of all the times she and Natasha sat in the compound with Natasha throwing popcorn at the TV as people performed their mourning.

He comes back and sits in the car, taking off the mask. “Sam agreed. I thought he would. And Buck’s going to be his wingman.”

“Good,” she says. She can’t say more, can’t rid herself of the heaviness in her heart long enough to compose the words. 

He sets his hand on top of hers, and they drive back to the cabin.

* * *

Bucky comes back to visit sometimes. Not often. The three of them sit and talk, and there’s laughter and memories.

“You should help us out sometime,” he tells her one visit. “Since Steve’s dead and all.”

“I’ll think about it.”

* * *

She does think about it. She thinks of other things, too. She prints out the last photo Natasha sent her and frames it, putting it in a place of honor on a bookshelf. She doesn’t mention it to Steve, but she doesn’t hide it from him, either.

He doesn’t say anything, just hugs her and kisses her neck. He whispers reassurances, but they both know that a loss is a loss, and it must be embraced. And she tries to move on, and so does he, but they each catch each other staring into the distance thinking about what could have been. They each have dreams about her and Tony. They try to move on, but their best efforts take them only so far.

* * *

The next morning, she wakes up before he does. He stirs, and she knows he’s awake. He’s always been a light sleeper. But she wants to do this alone and doesn’t speak to him, and he pretends to go back to sleep, and she leaves.

She drives back to the lake where they buried Tony. She makes a little origami boat. Then another. And another.

She sets them on the lake one after the other and watches them float away. It isn’t a funeral for a friend. It isn’t a celebration with fireworks. But it’s something.

* * *

She agrees to help Bucky and Sam from behind the scenes. She feels odd at first. It’s been a long time since she was with two people at a time when one of the people wasn’t Steve. It’s the first time she’s taken off the ring and hidden it under her shirt. 

She finds her footing. There’s only so much she can do. She can’t help Bucky with his therapy. She can’t help Sam with how some people hurl insults at him and how some people say he’ll never be the real Captain America. But she does what she can, and she thinks she adds enough to the team to justify her presence.

Within a year, she’s reached out to Fury. She doesn’t ask for work, merely offers her services. She knows he doubts her abilities. She’s been out of the game for a long time. But she’s still good at what she sets her mind to, and her work with Bucky and Sam proves that.

* * *

The second year finds her at the lake again with more boats. Steve joins her the year after that, and Bucky and joins them the year after that. They sit and they fold paper until they have an entire fleet.

“Did this mean something to her?” Bucky asks at last.

“We were learning hobbies,” Sharon says. It’s the first time someone’s spoken at one of these, and it takes her a moment to acclimate to the sound of voices. “I was going to get her to do origami with me next.”

He nods and goes back to folding.

“We learned to knit,” she says after a moment. “Made each other really bad scarves for Christmas. Just to prove we could. But I don’t want to drown the scarf she made me.”

He nods again. After that, the silence never lasts. Each of them will share some memory, however small. It fits, somehow, and she thinks about how if Natasha could see them, she would throw popcorn at them.

* * *

It’s inevitable that Sam will one day find out that Steve isn’t old. Steve can lie with the best of them when he wants to, but Sam isn’t stupid and Steve doesn’t wear the mask all the time.

They’re all aware, in the vague way of people who never have to deal with someone else’s problems, that Sam has had a hard time with the shield, with people saying he doesn’t deserve it. But they don’t realize how much he’s wanted to talk to Steve, to get guidance from Steve, to even give the shield back, but has held back because Steve is old and doesn’t want to do that anymore.

It doesn’t help that Bucky and Sharon knew. It doesn’t help that they all said they were his friend, but never told them Sharon and Steve were married. He feels like an outside on his own team, and they are guilty of making him feel that way. They are guilty of having made excuses for not inviting him to the cabin. They are guilty of not inviting him wholly into their lives while claiming to support him in whatever way he needs. They each try to talk to him, but neither of them can say the right things. Steve gets very little chance to say anything when he tries talking to him.

He gets into bed that night and pulls up the covers. “He’ll forgive me, right?”

“Of course he will,” she says gently. “But you should probably grovel some more.”

“Probably.”

He grovels. Sharon grovels. Bucky grovels. 

Sam finally forgives them. He still isn’t completely happy. He won’t be for a while. But none of them ask for him to be happy with them.

He demands changes. They listen. They adapt. It requires that she become a bigger part of the team. Steve, too. They aren’t always seen, but Sam has been left to carry a weight he thinks no one understands. To an extent, no one _can_ understand. But they try to do a better job of helping him carry it.

During one of Sam’s visits to the cabin, Sharon pulls him aside and tells him about the memorial they do. He’s welcome to join them, if he think he would be interested.

He’s interested. He’s been doing a small ceremony himself for several years now. He joins them. He folds the boats. He makes jokes. He dispels the sadness with a joy born of knowing Natasha, of honoring her.

They talk for the first time about what Natasha would think of their ceremony. What she would think about her sacrifice. Of origami. Of anything. They talk about her best jokes and her worst jokes. They talk about the people who mattered to her, to the people she mattered to.

“There’s gotta be a way to get souls out of the soul stone,” Bucky says at last. 

“You’d think. But I haven’t heard anything,” Steve says. There’s a touch of gray at his temples. He tells Sharon sometimes that he thinks hair is getting thinner. She doesn’t tell him that it’s true. The serum kept him healthy, but good health didn’t always mean good hair.

“We didn’t hear anything about bringing everyone back,” Sharon says thoughtfully. “Not for years.”

“I’ve already talked to Strange about it,” Sam says. “He doesn’t know a way.”

“That doesn’t mean there isn’t one,” Bucky persists.

They look at each other in silence.

“Some people move on,” Sharon intones dryly.

“But not us,” they echo.

* * *

They continue with their missions. It starts to feel like there must always be a Captain America, and maybe it’s true.

But on the side, they acquire enough information on the soul stone to rival Dr. Strange’s own library. Natasha isn’t the only person the soul stone took. She isn’t the only one they lost.

Maybe it’s unhealthy. Sharon and Steve talk about that sometimes, when it’s late at night and the room is pitch black. 

But they owe it to Natasha to try. And so they try, and they try, and they try, and one day, they may yet succeed. They’d done the impossible before. They can do it again.


End file.
